Find Someone

The first place you'll want to go when trying to find someone online is Zabasearch. Type the person's full name into the search field, and see what comes up.

You most likely will get a lot of information here, but do not pay for information. If you see something that asks you to pay, disregard. You'll be able to obtain a good amount of absolutely free information here on the person you are looking for - or at least enough to keep going.

Once you have your information, copy and paste it to a Word document or Notepad file for easy access, and keep on going to the next step in this list.

In order to find someone on the Web, you're going to need all your sleuthing skills - very rarely does all the information you're looking for come to you in one search. That's where Google comes in. You can use this article on Google People Search to find someone online.

For instance, merely typing the person's full name in quotations - "John Smith" - into Google's search field can potentially yield quite a few favorable results. If you know where the person lives - "John Smith" Atlanta - you'll get even more results. How about where the person works? "John Smith" "coca-cola" Atlanta.

Once you've gone as far as you can go with Google People Search, copy and paste your information onto your research file, and go on to the next step.

Facebook is one of the largest social sites on the Web - and there is a very good chance that the person you are looking for has a profile there.

If you have the full name of the person you're looking for, you can use that to find them on Facebook. You can also find someone on Facebook by using their email address, if you have it. Or, you can type in the name of the high school, college, or company that the person you're looking for is affiliated with.

Once you've searched around in Facebook, add that information to your research file, and move on to the next step in Find Someone Online.

Pipl is a people-specific search engine that gives you information that's a bit different than what you'll find using Google or Yahoo, because it searches the invisible Web, otherwise known as the information that's not readily accessible in a cursory Web search.

Type in the person's name that you're looking for in the Pipl search box, and see what you come up with. Once you have the information you're looking for, add it to your Find Someone research file (which should be filling up quite nicely by now!) and go on to the next step.

Find someone with Wink, a people search engine that focuses not only on traditional search engine results, but social community profiles as well. Type as much as you can into Wink's search boxes: full name, location, etc., and see what you can come up with.

Once you have the information you're looking for, add it to your research file and let's keep going!

You can find nearly anything on the Web; however, obituaries, published daily in nearly every newspaper around the world, aren't so easy to find online.

In fact, since most newspapers do not publish digital archives of their papers online, finding obituaries usually ends up being a (gasp!) offline research task. In this how-to, I'm going to give you a few pointers you can use to start your obituary search on and off the Web.

If you want to find someone online, one of these resources in the Top Ten Public Records Sources is sure to help you.

These are some of the best free public record search databases online, from obituaries to census records. Note: Depending on the state or country that you live in, you might not be able to access more personal public records, such as birth certificates, drivers' licenses, marriage certificates, etc., without A)showing physical proof of identification or B)paying a fee.

Once you've gone as far as you can go with public records (remember, I advise you NOT to pay for information - get much as you can get for free and move on!), let's keep going to the next step in finding someone online.

Spock is a uniquely formatted search engine that focuses only on people and information about people. You can use Spock to find someone online; just enter in what you know about the person and you're on your way. Try a full name, email, name and location to get started at Spock.

ZoomInfo takes searching for people on the Web to a whole new level; by using a combination of various technologies to crawl the Web (Web sites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings, etc.), ZoomInfo organizes all the information about people into a readable, sensible format - profiles that can also be searched within ZoomInfo by corporate headhunters.

Type in who you're looking for into ZoomInfo and you'll potentially come back with a lot of information that leads to other information: i.e., links that show you where else that person is on the Web (that's IF they have a presence online. If the person you are looking for doesn't get on the Web much, this isn't going to do you much good.).

If the person you're looking for has done anything on the Web, PeekYou should be able to pick it up.

For example,Peekyou enables you to search for usernames across a variety of social networking communities. For instance: say you would like to learn more about the person who uses the handle "I-Love-Kittens"; you can use PeekYou to see what else they might be doing on the Web under that username (most people use the same username across many different Web services, so you could potentially hit some major paydirt here!).

Add your PeekYou information to your ever-growing dossier, and let's keep moving on.