This article covers free people search engines that you can use to search for people in USA and all over the world. These websites ask for the name of the person and location where you might find that person. These services send web crawlers to look up for strings of name you mentioned, opening links after links. Some of these services even dwell in the deep web to get you a listing. These people search engines come up with the current location, phone number and sometimes even the address and the photo of the person you are searching for. So if you want to search for a long lost friend or look up a girl you were sweet on in your teens, then this list is what you should definitely check out. By the way, you should check out these 3 anonymous search engine extensions for chrome since we are talking of search engines.
Pipl
Pipl.com is a well known search engine that specializes in finding people all over the world. The USP of this ‘people search engine‘ is that it uses crawlers in the ‘deep web‘ that return with the details of the person you’re searching. The deep web, if you don’t know is basically a huge network of unlisted databases and pages on the World Wide Web that normal search engines don’t reach. But the Pipl.com web crawlers tap into the deep web and assimilate the records found in those pages. It works on building a cluster of whatever info it finds on a target and creates an identity resolution. The website returns with all the phone numbers of the target, picture, associated people, associated places, public records and online services the target is registered to including social networks. This website is pretty good at searching people.
Peekyou
Peekyou is a simple search engine that looks for people online based on social media posts, blogs, pages, news etc. This website respects people’s privacy unlike some of the search engines listed here. Peekyou has a patented technology that scans all over the visible web for the target and groups up the digital footprints to bring you a cohesive result. This search engine is a lot favorable when the person you’re searching resides in the USA, as the search engine is more optimized for those searches. This ‘people search engine‘ provides you with the current place of stay, picture, interests, social networking handles, public records, etc. The website also features the bio of the target and a feature called ‘PeekScore‘ where they rate a person based on their online prominence. For security, it enables you to delete the entire listing of yourself (or a friend) by the ‘Opt Out‘ option. However, it features bait links for fake websites that suck out your money in a promise to extract arrest records of the person you are searching.
ThatsThem
ThatsThem is a really simple and awesome online people finder to look for people. It is the only website that I came across that gives properly formatted information of the person you’re searching. The website offers you verified email address, alternate email addresses, phone numbers, financial information (which I think is a bit creepy), education, religion (they infer this from the target’s last name), place of residence and even if the individual owns a pet or not. An exclusive feature of this search results is that it scores people based on wealth, travel, shopping etc. This feature, in my opinion, is a bit judgmental and I wonder why users would need this. This is not presented as Peekyou’s PeekScore is, which centers on the online prominence of the target. It also shows where it has mined the information of the target from. The contact details it provides are claimed to be verified. Other than looking for people by their name, you can also do reverse phone lookups, trace people using vehicle identification number and email address. The only downer here is that it only searches American records.
411
411.com is yet another search engine to search the web for a person online. It lists people based on social networks, yellowpage entries, etc. It also lists people that the searched person may know, which can help you search in the right direction. It lists the address of the person, age, phone number and the people who the searched person may know. You can download the info as a vcf file, print it, or even have it texted on your mobile. A really good feature of this search engine is that it shows the location of the target on Google Maps. This does not search for people outside the USA.
Spokeo
Spokeo is an information aggregation website that aggregates information of people you search on this site. This is similar to Pipl, but a more infamous one. Spokeo, like Pipl, uses the deep web to sniff out information of the desired person. A really good feature it provides (especially after consumer complaints) is that you can remove your information that Spokeo has listed by clicking ‘OptOut’. Spokeo in its earliest form gave out a lot of info about the target, including wealth, mortgage, personal photos, photos of private residences, etc. This was a concern for law enforcement agencies since it would allow cyber stalking. As of now, watered down, it provides you with the name, age, address, alias, family members, location history, features of residence, zodiac sign, ethnicity, etc. The only drawback I experienced is that it’s only available for Americans and can only be accessed by American IP addresses. It shows partial information for free, but for more detailed information you need to create a paid account with this website.
Skipease
Skipease is a really useful website that assimilates all the information aggregating websites in one page. Here you can choose over 14 different search engines and famous social networking sites to search that loved one or a long forgotten friend. This website is really awesome as you can get the best of every search engine of this kind. You can conduct searches parallel to each other which, helps save a lot of time and energy.
Conclusion
After testing all these people search engines, I can easily say that ThatsThem is the best in this list. It is because ThatsThem provides extensive and verified information about the person you are searching for. The one I found least preferable is Spokeo. Spokeo didn’t provide me with the necessary contact handles that one expects to find since the information was partially hidden. Spokeo’s service was also unavailable to non-American IP addresses. Peekyou, on the other hand, had too much of baits leading to cheating, money sucking information services that promise to show you criminal records of the one you are searching for. This list is worth checking out and I hope you do.
What would you use to search people you have no information about? Let me know in the comments!
