How to find people online
There are many sites on the Internet and search engines that help find people on the Internet. Below are some different sites and methods of locating someone online.
Most of these services work best for finding someone that is alive. If you are looking for someone that is deceased, you may want to start with a Google search. Another option that could work better are genealogy sites, which can have more details for deceased people.
The sites and services on this page are primarily for those users who are in the United States. However, some sites listed have other countries available and the Google search tips listed near the bottom of this page can be used by anyone globally.
Many of these services require some registration or payment to get more detailed information about the person you are trying to find. There is no service or site we know of that provides very personal information about a person for free. We have tried to create this list in order of services that provide the most information for free.
Facebook people search
Today, Facebook is one of the largest online social networks with over 500 million people. If you are looking for an old friend, using the Facebook people search is a great first place to start.
FamilyTreeNow
FamilyTreeNow
One of the best free sources online for finding people in the United States. With their collected records you can find someone's current and past address, associates, and family members.
PeekYou
PeekYou
Fantastic site for finding people online that searches over sixty different social networking sites, blogs, websites, and other sources online to find people.
Spokeo
Spokeo
One of the better sites for finding information about someone online such as family, home, online profiles, etc.
WhitePages
WhitePages
Great, easy-to-use page to find basic information about people in the United States.
PrivateEye
PrivateEye
PrivateEye is a quick easy and fast method of finding someone by name, address, phone number, marriage, bankruptcy records, and more. The site gives out free information such as full name, city, state, age, and possible relatives. Additional details such as phone and address are often available but require that the user pay a fee.
Google search
Almost everyone who has gone on the search engine Google has tried searching for themselves or others they know. Below are different methods of finding someone using Google.
Search for the person using their name. Below are different examples of how this could be done. If a user has a common name such as the example below adding the state, area code, etc. helps refine the search.
"John Smith"
"John Smith" Utah
"John Smith" 801
Pull up a person's name and address using a phone number by typing a search similar to the example below.
phonebook: 801-555-1234
Finally, searching popular social networking sites, such as MySpace, is another quick method of locating someone using Google. For example, if you were wanting to find your high school classmates, you could type a search similar to the example below.
site:www.myspace.com 1997 "west jordan"
In the above example, the "site:www.myspace.com" tells google to only search for pages that are on MySpace. All keywords used after this are what are being searched. In this case, "1997" is the graduation year and "West Jordan" is the high school name. (This is a basic example, and would require that the person you're looking has a MySpace page.)
Other sites
Below are some additional sites that help track down people online.
There are many sites that allow users to find people using public records. If you're not ale to find someone using the above sites, you can search Google for other sites.