The White Pages site has made it easier to do nearby / neighbor searches online.

If you have an old or current address for someone, but have been unsuccessful at contacting the person you are looking for at that address, neighbors can often shed light on the situation. Neighbors will often confirm whether or not the person still lives at the given address, move out dates etc. Some neighbors are more than willing to deliver a message to the person for you. Just be sure to follow the law when talking to neighbors, especially if you are a debt collector.

To use the White Pages nearby / neighbor search simply do a reverse address lookup or people search and then click the “Find Neighbors” link below your listing to locate possible neighbors for the given listing or address.

If you are a manager of a debt collections department for a company, you know the importance of early contact with delinquent debtors in receiving payments and protecting collateral. Unfortunately, many collection departments do not pay much attention to skip tracing efforts within the first 30 days of the collection process.

Accounts that roll into 30 day collections are often handled by automated dialer systems that will mindlessly dial wrong or disconnected numbers over and over, unless there is a process in place that allows collectors to report and correct system mistakes. Sometimes these wrong numbers are a simple data entry mistake that could be corrected by pulling the loan file and reviewing the application information for the original contact information.

Other times incorrect information was given on the loan application by the signer and cosigner on the loan, in which case it is very important to start skip trace work immediately to successfully locate the borrower and protect any collateral they may have.

In any case, you should have a system in place that catches these problems early on in the collection process. You may want to set up an early skip trace queu, where automated dialer collectors can send delinquent accounts with bad contact information to be worked manually outside of the automated system by one of your better skip tracers. Even providing your automated dialer collectors with a simple skip trace form that allows them to record potentially problematic accounts to be worked manually by a skilled skip tracer can benefit your collection efforts.

Remember, the name of the game is bringing as many delinquent accounts current as possible; protecting your company’s collateral and keeping bad debt chargeoffs to a minimum. To that end, early skip tracing efforts can prove invaluable to your debt collection efforts.

Here are the top free reverse address lookup options currently available on the internet:

1. WhitePages Reverse Address Lookup - White Pages is currently the best online source for reversing 411 listed addresses.

2. DAPlus Reverse Address Lookup - The DAPlus reverse address lookup contains millions of listings contained in other free 411 people search sites. DAPlus pulls listings from additional sources than just 411 directory assistance, including public record sources and consumer information sources.

3. Google Reverse Address Lookup - Google and other search engines are great for doing a reverse phone lookup; reverse email lookup or reverse address lookup.

If you have any reverse address tips or tricks that you would like to add, please share them in the comments section below.

Good luck with your people search and web search efforts.

At the present there are a handful of free reverse phone lookup options on the internet. Whether you are trying to reverse lookup a listed or unlisted phone number, including unlisted cell phone numbers, there are a few good options online:

1. WhitePages Reverse Phone Lookup - one of the best online 411 people search sites for reversing listed numbers.

2. DAPlus Reverse Phone Lookup - contains millions of listings that other 411 people search sites don’t have. You will often be able to reverse lookup unlisted phone numbers, including cell phone numbers on here.

3. Google Reverse Phone Lookup - if you can’t reverse lookup the phone number on the previous two sites, try running the phone number through Google to reverse it on the web. Often, people will publish their phone number online in various places along with personal information and Google may have indexed the web page. You can also try reverse searching email addresses on search engines like Google

4. Technorati - With the proliferation of personal blogs and news feeds, more and more people are publishing their numbers and email addresses online. Technorati is a great place to search blog postings for email addresses and phone numbers.

If you can think of any other options for doing a reverse phone lookup or reverse email lookup, add your tips in the comments section below.

Good luck with your people search and web search efforts.

If you want to do free people searches using some of the more advanced Google search features, then you should try the Google Advanced Search. Doing free people searches with Google Advanced is as easy as entering a person’s name and keywords in predefined search boxes and selecting the available Google search options to target your people search and weed out unwanted results.

Instead of remembering Google search tricks, like the proper use of quotation marks and all the custom Google search options, like site and file specific searches with the site: and filetype: addons; you can simply enter your names and keywords in predefined fields and choose your people search options on the Google Advanced search page.

Try out some people searches of your own. Play around with the advanced features of Google Search, using your name or the names of others, to get a feel for the technology. Once you get used to the advanced options, your people searches will become more targeted and useful than just entering a person’s name on the main Google Search page.

You can try out some advanced Google free people searches of your own at Google Advanced Search.

Google also offers many helpful tips for using their advanced search that explain the different search options. These can really help with your free people search efforts. You can read the Google Advanced search tips at Google Advanced Search Tips

Good luck.

Ever find a web page on one of the major search engines that references a person or topic that you are searching for, only to find out that the page is too long or cluttered for speedy reading or scanning? Use ctrl+F ( hold down the “ctrl” key and “F” key at the same time ) to get a search box on your web browser, type in the name or search phrase that you are looking for to search on any open page or document.

If the original phrase or person that you searched for on the engine isn’t found on the web page, it is possible that the page has been updated since the last time it was indexed by your search engine. If you use the Google or Yahoo search engines, you can hit your back button to return to the search results and choose the “cached” link to see a copy of the old web page that was indexed by the search engine.

The Friendster social network has over 21 million ( and growing ) user profiles. Friendster has a free profile search on their web site to search people profiles. Friendster users post everything from name; hometown; email address; schools and universities attended; personal pictures and job history on their profiles, making it a great free people search.

You can search the friendster site by name / email, school or hometown. Unfortunately the friendster search does not make it easy to search multiple criteria or keywords at the same time, but there is a possible workaround using Google.

Say you wanted to search Friendster for someone named Joe Shmoe who graduated from Duke University and his hometown is Atlanta, GA, you could try the following Google search: Joe Shmoe Duke University Atlanta site:friendster.com. This search would search all the Friendster pages that have been indexed by Google where the words Joe Shmoe Duke University Atlanta appear on the page.

You can access the Friendster people search half way down their log in page at Friendster

Use Google Alerts to have your people searches delivered to your email inbox. Google Alerts will email you with periodic updates whenever web pages are indexed that match your search phrase.

Have you ever Googled and Googled somebody, only to find out that they have no findable ‘paper trail’ on the web? Or maybe you already have a lot of information on someone, but want to keep up with new information that becomes available on the web about that person. Just type in the name or search criteria on Google Alerts along with your email address and Google will email you with updates as new pages that match your search are added to their search engine.

Of course the more refined and precise your search phrase is, the more likely it is that Google Alerts will return reliable results. For instance, a search phrase of “John Doe” is more precise than just a search for John Doe without double quotation marks. Also a name search with specific identifying words added like “Bill Gates” microsoft is more reliable than just “Bill Gates”.

You can also track new information on someone that is posted on specific web sites. For instance, a search for “Bill Gates” site:microsoft.com will track information on Bill Gates that is added to the microsoft.com site.

You can use these tips with Google Alerts to keep up on new web information on anyone from past friends, enemies, coworkers, family etc. Just remember, the better the search phrase(s) entered, the more meaningful the results will be.

You can access the Google Alerts site at Google Alerts.

Good luck with your searches.

Free People Search

It is usually not necessary to pay hundreds of dollars to a professional to find people from your past.   If you are trying to find a person from your past like a family member, friend, classmate, coworker, chances are that you already know enough about the person to find them yourself, even if you don’t know the person’s social security number. 

When starting your own free people search, write down all known identifying information about the person that you can remember.  Here are some ideas and tips for finding people you’re are searching for.

1.  The person’s first / last names, nicknames, married and maiden names (for married females). If the last name is not common, you can do a last name only search for states that the person has lived in to find possible family members to contact.

2.  Any schools attended - high school, college, trade schools etc.  Contact high school reunion groups or university alumni organizations for help in locating the person.  In addition, you should contact any student groups that the person was involved in - fraternities, sororities,  political and social student organizations etc.

3. Any place that the person lived.  Where did they grow up?  Where have they lived?  These are places where they may still have family members with the same last name that you can contact for help in finding the person.

4.  Mutual friends and acquaintances that you and the person you are looking for have in common.  Contact a mutual friend, colleague etc. to help you find the person.

5.  What profession is the person involved in?  Most states require licensing for many professional jobs like doctors, lawyers and beauticians.   Sometimes people can be found with a business address and phone number through professional searches on state government sites.  In addition, a simple search engine search for the person may turn up possible business addresses and phone numbers that have been published online as well as any published comments or professional writings from the person.

6.  Place a missed connections ad in a publication that is printed in an area that the person lived in or on a message board, like www.craigslist.com .

Finding a person from your past may not always be easy, but it doesn’t have to be expensive if you use these tips.  Once you start your free people search, you will think of additional ideas and contacts to find the person.

For a directory of the web’s best free people searches, finders and locators, visit http://www.411×411.com .

Good luck with your searches!

If you would like to add some free people search tips / ideas of your own, please use the comments link below this post to submit your ideas and opinions.

Reverse Lookup Tips -

One of the best ways for doing reverse lookups on unpublished phone numbers; addresses;  cell phone numbers and email addresses is to look for them on the major search engines.  People will often post up-to-date, private, non published information like  phone numbers; cell numbers; physical addresses and email addresses in online resumes; web logs; message boards and other such places, along with other identifying information about themselves.  Often the information that people are willing to post online is not published in other public directories, like online white pages and email searches. 

Try reversing your own phone number(s); cell number(s); email address(es) or physical address(es) on Yahoo or Google to see if any of them are posted online anywhere.  Now try this for other people that you know: friends, family, coworkers etc. 

For a great list of many of the online reverse lookups available, visit 411 x 411 - Reverse Lookups  .