Over the years, I’ve seen hundreds of different people search sites on the internet. Many of them seemed to have very similar functions so I figured I would separate them into different categories like: social networking search websites, white pages sites (or databases, because they store the information on their own site), background check/public record sites and ‘missing person’ ad websites.
1) Social networking search websites
Their primary role: They search through Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/Hi5/Bebo/Digg profiles at once, thus saving you a lot of time.
Pros: Most of those sites are free to search. These days everyone seems to have a social networking profile. I’ve also noticed that most people use their real names on these sites instead of user names or nicknames, as most did earlier. This is good news.
Cons: You will often be required to browse through lots of profiles. It is simply impossible for these social networking search sites to display narrower results because most profiles contain very little information (only name and age, no phone/email/address) about a specific person.
Top 2 social networking search websites: 123People (good for international search), MyLife (good for United States search, check out this article on how to search using MyLife.)
2. White Pages databases
Their primary role: They get their information from various public sources and display them in one window. You can get the current address/phone number of a person with these engines.
Pros: You’ll be surprised at the amount of data these sites can get. They have billions of (current) addresses and phone numbers in their database. These sites are free of charge.
Cons: The most advanced sites of this typr target people who live in United States. If you want to find international white pages, then you’ll have to use engine like Google and do a research.
Top 2 White Pages sites: WhitePages and ZabaSearch. They work for United States only.
3. Background Check/Public Record Sites
Their primary role: They aggregate more private information than the white pages directories. Some of the information they provide is: history of past addresses, phone numbers, all types of public records and so on.
Pros: They are constantly updated and very cheap
Cons: There are lots of scam sites that have outdated databases and make ridiculous claims (for example, they say they provide access to all types of information on all people for only $10-$15.)
Top 2 Background Check/Public Record sites: US Search and Intelius
4. ‘Missing person’ ad websites
Their primary role: You have lots of sites of this type. Just type ‘missing person ads’ in a search engine like Google and you should get results.
Pros: You want to post an ad if you’re looking for a specific person because many people do so-called ‘ego searches’ (they enter their name into Google), and on more sites you post details on the person you’re searching for, the bigger the chances are he or she is going to see that result when entering the name into Google.
Cons: It takes some time.
Top website for this purpose: City Data People Search Forum
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