Allow me to show you some basic and advanced ways to search the entire internet for public records in a specific state or nationwide. You’ll find great databases along the way which can provide you with some amazing information about a specific person.
1. Start with a general search engine
I will guess you’re looking for public records within a specific state (even if you’re not, this step also applies to you.) You need to start with a general search engine in order to familiarize yourself with the different types of public records available in a specific state.
So, for Florida public records, type ‘Florida public records’ into Google and Bing. I recommend you use them both. Take a look at the results and look for sites ending with either .us or .gov (those should be the official sites of the state.) Ignore .com, .net and .org sites for since we want to get our information directly from the source.
Google Search Results for Florida Public Records
In our example (for Florida), I found this site. Perfect!
2. Continue searching using the general search engines & the sites you found in step 1 for a specific type of records
In our example, I found I can obtain different types of records from the above site alone. See if this is also the case for the website(s) you found. If not, then repeat the above step (use Google and Bing), just instead of ‘public records’, enter ‘criminal records’ (this depends on the type of records you’re searching for.) In my example the query would be ‘Florida criminal records’. Again, we look for .us and .gov sites only.
This is an approach to obtain this type of information from the state’s database directly.
However, there are some disadvantages to this approach. Many people report they sometimes don’t get the information, the online search engines of the state are very outdated, the waiting time is too long and so on.
There’s a solution to this, though. Read step 3.
3. Use Private Databases
By ‘private databases’ I mean companies whose job is to collect all of the public record data nationwide in their own database. You can then invest to access that database (it’s cheap, though.) The advantages here, compared to the previous 2 steps, are:
- Faster access
- Not worrying about providing a reason why you are looking for a specific public record
- In case you have a problem, you’ll have far more superior customer support
Use this approach if you want to search for ALL TYPES of public records on someone.
The best companies of this kind that have regularly updated databases, in my opinion, are US Search and Intelius.
Example of what information you can get about a person from a private database (this screenshot is taken from US Search website, the link is above)
Now, go back and apply the steps. You’ll be able to find the available public records on anyone in United States.
