How To Do A People Search
But, don't just search for it, save it when you find it!Address search, people search, phone search, all searching takes some work, but a few useful tips can make your searching experience a lot easier. If you're looking for people, use any of the people search engines. They will all return a list of people you can filter by State and City, if you know that information.
But, you may still get a long list from a name search if you're searching for a common name. Two things are useful in whittling down that list. Middle initials and and age detail. Use people finder search engines that let you add age and use middle name initials if you know them.
All public records search engines provide free people search, at least initially. Never pay for information until you have used the free searching to narrow down your search. If you are clever about it you won't have to pay at all. If you do have to pay eventually, you will pay only for what you are fairly certain that what you will get is what you want.
Here's how I tracked down a girl I knew in high school. I didn't know if she was married or who she had married if she was. I knew the month and year of her birth date, but wasn't sure of the day. I used several of the sites listed below to get what I needed. I was lucky that her last name was a fairly uncommon one, but the strategy would work regardless.
There are many more, of course. There are likely more than a few search engine ads from people search sites accompanying this article. Some are better at some things than others, try them out to find what you want. Also do a search for "people search engines". Many will come up as "free" searches, but frequently, while the "search" is free, you still are required to pay for withheld information. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible to get to get phone numbers and addresses without having to pay for them. Try "free" engines and see what you can find.
To find my old friend, I typed her last name into a marriage license search and got two hits, one for a groom and one for a bride. Obviously, the bride was what I was looking for, so I could discount the groom. No information is given however, other than the last name I had entered, so if I wanted to find her married name, at this point, I would have to pay to get the marriage license information.
The cost was twelve or fourteen dollars at that time, it may be cheaper today. If you get a list of names, you can get the whole list for the same price and hope your target is among the names.
Once you have the marriage information, of course, you also have the groom and bride's names or maiden names, and that allows you to reduce the size of the list using those filters.
Sure enough, the information I received fit the person I was looking for. I used the same search engine I used for the marriage information to try to locate my friend. Her married name was a common one, so a search brought up a very long list. But, here is where middle initials come in handy. I used her middle name that I had known in high school, but didn't get anywhere. Then I remembered that back then it was common for the girl to use her maiden name as her new middle name along with her husband's last name. This narrowed the list quite a bit, without eliminating everyone. Now is when the age function comes in handy.
The search engine I used allowed both birth date and age boxes, so first I used just the age box. This narrowed my list to only a few. I then entered what I remembered of her birth date. I was sure of the month, but not the day, so I just guessed at the latter. Then I realized the search engine was providing me with information by telling me that the birth date was wrong and even telling me specifically that the day was wrong.
Of course, by telling me what was wrong, it was also telling what was right. One of the names on the list fit both spousal names, correct month and correct age. I was pretty sure this was who I wanted, but I wanted to see if I could use the search engine to get the exact birth date. I thought it was the tenth day of the month, but that's what I was using and it was telling me I was wrong.
So, I started with the first, then the second and so on until I got to the ninth, and bingo, the message telling me the birth date day was wrong went away. Now I knew I had it. The free information provided told me the city and state and listed possible relatives names. The relative names can also be very useful in narrowing down your free searches, but at this point, for this particular search, that wasn't needed.
Now the only thing I would have to pay for here, that wasn't provided free, was the address and telephone numbers. But, at least at this point, you are pretty sure you have what you want and if you need that information, it would have cost only around five dollars. It seems to be about half that now, at the time of this writing. I would have had to pay a private investigator upwards of one hundred fifty dollars for what I had gotten so far for only twelve dollars, or around seventeen, if I wanted the phone numbers and addresses.
However, with a little more searching, using Google you can often get even that information free. Since you know the married names, maiden names, city and state, just type that information into Google in this format, name, city, state, zip, and you just might get exactly what you are looking for complete with phone numbers. Not always, but frequently.
You might also try a reverse phone search or yahoo and hotmail searches.
One last tip and time for a shameless plug. What's the point of doing all this work if you don't have a place to put the results of the information you collect. You really can use a good name and address application to store your information for easy retrieval later. The name of my favorite program is Names 'n' Stuff. With this little program you can store an unlimited number of phone numbers for each name, unlimited notes containing all the relevant information gathered from your search. You also get an integrated Zip Code database, appointment reminders and more.
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