Search People USA

The first, and most obvious place to start would be your normal search engine, whether that is Google, MSN, Yahoo! or any of the other smaller engines. This approach can work if the person you are trying to locate has created a website about themselves, or has been written about on a webpage by someone else. The big problem with this method is that unless you are looking for someone with a very unique name the search engine will likely have many results and it would be impossible to go through them all. For example, searching Google for Anthony North gives back almost 17 million webpages, some of the results are people, some businesses, at least one motel of the same name and a St Anthony North hospital in Colorado. Also, if you do find the person you are looking for, as it is on a website you will probably find a report on when they came second in a fishing competition or fell off the horse in an equestrian event, not information that will actually help you locate them.

The second method involves signing up with social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook and Myspace, and searching for the person you want to locate on these sites. This can also work as these sites only have results of actual people rather than similar place names or businesses, and you generally would see a picture of the person which will allow you to confirm if you have found the right person. However, although these site have members worldwide in their millions, Facebook for example is only used by around 14% of the US population, so your chances are still not great of finding the person you want, especially if they don´t want to be found.

The alternative method of finding someone is to use one of the many paid services like SearchPeopleUSA.net that access public records and databases throughout every State of the US. These services have direct access to millions of records on a network of multiple data sources. The results they provide when you search people will likely include the persons age as well as several recent locations so confirming you have found the right person is easy. Like the two methods above you can do a free search which take just a few seconds, and you only pay to access the persons full report if they have what you are looking for. As these services have records of around 90% of the US population, including such things as marriage and divorce records, civil and criminal court records and property and housing records, it is highly likely you will find the person you are looking for. The best thing about membership is that usually they allow unlimited searches, so once you have the information you want you can quickly find old friends and lost relatives too, as well as find out what other people know about you. Check this before becoming a member though as some sites you are only paying for one report.

A good place to start would be a free search at Search People USA. Their servers have instant access to around 1 billion records of current and historical data on 225 million US residents. The data includes names and addresses, unlisted land and cell phone numbers, criminal history and civil court reports, property deeds and titles as well as much more information on almost anyone in any US State.