There are many sites online where you can people-search for free. Here are the best of best, some of which I bet you didn't know about:
Google, of course. Remember to use a variety of search strategies to isolate the right results. Here's a good overview of simple people-search strategies. For deeper insights on search strategies, visit this Knol on People Search from my good colleague Andrew Czernek.
The National (US) White Pages phone book is also one of the first places to look.
Google News will unearth news items about the person you're looking for. Be sure to include the News Archives as well, which can search back to the 1700's...a great resource for ancestry research.
The Social Security Death Index has records on 82 million deaths that have occured since 1963. Expert users should take advantage of the advanced SSDI interface created by the well-known genealogy researcher, Steve Morse.
Intelius is a commercial people search service, but you can do a preliminary search on their deep database for free, often with surprisingly good results. If you search often, consider subscribing to their service.
For criminal background checks, an interesting free resource is Criminal Searches. I haven't explored this in depth yet, but it seems to have a deep, national database of everything from speeding tickets to violent crimes.
Social networking sites sometimes produce good, focused results. Try MySpace, FaceBook, and Classmates.com for starters, and also check Google Groups and BlogSearch.
Search inside published books for mention of your person at Amazon and Google Books.
Search Jigsaw.com for business and company contact information. Jigsaw is a terrific (and often overlooked) people-search tool, that offers preliminary information at no charge.
An unusual resource is a search at MissingMoney.com (unclaimed funds and property). People who make themselves hard to find sometimes leave assets behind, and these are eventually entered into state unclaimed property databases.
And while we're on the topic of money, you can search for the name and address of people who have made political contributions to candidates in federal or state elections.
A few sites do a good job of filtering ordinary search results to present people-specific information. Among them are Wink, Spock, and WikiWorldBook.
Public Records are a tremendous resource, but are far too numerous and diverse to summarize. Try a Google search on the term registered voters along with the name of the county and state you're interested in. You may well find voter lookup tools like this one.
Family history resources are also too diverse to cover fully, but here are three worth knowing about: FamilySearch.org, Ellis Island Immigration database, and Cyndi's List of genealogy resources.
Some of the above resources are described in a bit more detail in this eHow article on People Search.
Let me know if there are other no-cost people search tools that should be added to this list.
David Sarokin
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WikiWorldBook
Could you please add our site, http://WikiWorldBook
We offer people a free people search engine providing highly focused results.
Ben Leefield
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