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People Search

How to Begin a People Search for Family or a Lost Love

There are several ways you can go about searching for a person, and no one way works best for all searches. Write down everything that you have tried and what has or hasn't produced results of some kind, that way you don't repeat things you've already done, which can be costly. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, "The definition of insanity is repeating the same action, each time expecting to get a different result." Depending on how much information you have, you can try doing a little leg-work on your own before you pay for additional information. Once you find information, gather it and use those bits of information to help you sort through information you find on the web

You can try a few searches on sites like Yahoo and Google. Google and Yahoo are good, but they will often produce too many results, none of which seem quite right. You may or may not find the information you are looking for, but possibly a few doctors or professors whose name is the same, and 1.5 million matches to your search. Names are often more common than we think, and hundreds or even thousands of people may live in the United States with the same name. Just a few years ago, there was a reported nine people in the state of California registered with the DMV under the name Santa Clause. But that was before Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Governor.

Is There a Way to Search for Free?

Try searching for the name of the person on sites like Technorati, which will search blogs for the name, including both content and names of blog authors. If you have just a name and a city or state, you can try the online White Pages. Some will allow you to search for people either by city and state, or just state, or even searches including all states. Often the White Pages will offer reverse look-up features, in which you can search people by phone number or address, if you have either of them.

Social networking sites like MySpace will also return some results, but again, often in the hundreds without much luck. It's worth a try if you're on a budget and looking to gather as much information as possibly before you pay for a people search. Try a ZabaSearch on yourself, and see how much information comes up on yourself for free, you'll probably be amazed. Unless you are intentionally trying to not be found, you are likely to be in their free search. If not, then you'll want to try a more advanced search, such as PeopleFinders. Public Records – Checking various county, state, and federal searches for criminal, sex offender, real estate, marriage, birth, or death records.

Tips on Getting Started

Write down everything you know, and keep a steady list of all of it. This will include as you go, previous addresses, phone numbers, parents or family members, friends and mutual contacts you may have.   You could possibly search through alumni records for any schools, colleges, or universities they may have attended throughout the years. Perhaps even find them through a classmate. Remember to include any known nicknames, maiden names, married names, or spouse's names.

Women are a little harder to find after many years than a man would be. Men are a little bit easier because they don't change their name when they marry. Women on the other hand, they can marry, change their name, divorce and keep the name if permitted, and possibly marry again – gaining another name change. If you don't know who they may have married, finding out their new married name in a people search may be a little tough. That is when you will want to rely on your list of information, and everything you have already found out, and what does and does not return results. Remember what Einstein said, it'll come in handy.