Spock

NOTE: As of April 2010, Spock is no longer in business. Try these other people search engines instead: Fifteen Specific People Search Engines, Google People Search, and A Step by Step Guide to Finding Someone Online.

What is Spock?

Spock is a uniquely formatted search engine that focuses only on people and information about people.

How is Spock unique?

Spock is one of the more interesting people search engines I've run across in a long time, and here's why:

• You can search by the person's name, by tags, or by general topic. For instance: Hilary Clinton, Democrat, and internet celebrity. No matter what you search for, your results will ONLY return information specifically related to a person or people.
• You can add tags to a person's profile, including your own.Remember tags? Once you register as a Spock user (free), you can add tags to a profile, including your own, in order to make that profile more complete. You can also vote tags up or down, depending on how relevant you think they are to that person's information.
• Spock pulls in results from actual relevant Web sources. Many so-called free people search engines these days are nothing more than spam-filled ad factories - and they don't give you anything even remotely relevant to what you're looking for. Spock is different; it pulls in information from legitimate sources that don't charge for that information (Wikipedia, social networking sites, etc). This makes Spock's information much more interesting and relevant.

How do I use Spock to find someone?

Spock is simple to use. Just type in someone's name, or a people group characteristic (Portland lounge singers, New York cat lovers, etc.), and away you go. For the most part, celebrities and public personas are going to have more information available on them than the average Joe, simply because there is more easily accessible information available to compile. However, Spock is still a great people search engine to use as a good beginning point in your search to find someone (if for nothing else that it tends to give direct links to their information at various spots on the Web).

Why should I use Spock?

I found Spock very intriguing. Not only are the search results relevant and appropriate, but I also really appreciated how Spock invites user participation in order to make their listings more complete. Spock does have a few drawbacks (the average Joe doesn't necessarily have a very complete profile, for example), but at the time of this writing (August 2007) it's just out of beta, so I'm betting that as more people use Spock, add information, vote on tags, etc., it will only get better - the mark of a truly good search engine.