The Difference Between Search Engines And People Finders

Okay so you are looking for someone - a missing cousin, an old school friend or a collegue who lives halfway across the world but you are not exactly sure where. I am certain you have read up a bit about people finders i.e. about their usefulness in finding people online. And on the other hand you know about search engines that can find just about anything on the web.

Read on to learn about how to find people free online

Allow me to share a bit more about search engines and people finders. I will simply present some few factors that make them different from the other and how you should use them.

General search engines have the people finder capability but only a handful of people are fully aware of this search engine capability. For example, did you know that you can use one of 3 Google operators i.e. bphonebook: for business, rphonebook: for residential listings and phonebook: used to search all phone listings. This is made possible by the large phone book that Google has.

With that in mind, I should mention that search engines are not necessarily the best options when searching for someone online.

Some superior options include people finders. These have large databases or indexes on people’s identities - There are those that are built to cover the whole world and then there are those that are regional and focus on a specific target area. These provide different types of information for people in the US, including addresses (both current and past), birth yeards, phone numbers and more.

Most people finders provide you with the exact information you want from its database and unlike search engines; they do not provide hundreds of thousands of options in their results pages.

I should mention that there are two types of people finders i.e. paid and non-paid. while search engines are free to use there are those finders that will charge you a certain fee for looking through their databases. Usually the ones that charge you gather data from the individuals themselves and update frequently whereas the free services simply use publicly available information to put together an index or database.

It is a well known fact that some people finders are surrounded by privacy issues e.g., Zabasearch is one such company that has faced some criticism, but the truth is they really do work. I can only advise that while you are searching for people’s personal details keep in mind that they their privacy is protected by law - specifically The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This is one act you should take serious note of if you want to find someone free online i.e. make sure you don’t break it.

So you need to use websites and tools that do not necessarily invade people’s privacy but still provide the kind of information you are looking for. That is, still helps you in finding a person online.