Delicious Founder Creates New People Search Engine, Skills.to, Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb (Feb 29)
Joshua Schachater has created a new people search or skills search engine - SKill.to. . It's directly connected to Twitter. Didn't produce much on my searches.
"Joshua Schachter and his team of star developers at TastyLabs have begun work on a second project, an endorsement and people search engine called Skills.to. The site lets you endorse people for their skills in various fields, see what the people you know have been endorsed for and search for people with particular skills."
Newsie will alert you to when someone in your social network turns up in the news. It watches news sources and blogs for occurrences of the names. Connect through Facebook or Linked In - follow friends and any other people you're interested in. It's new - don't know if it tracks any Canadian sources.
See Tracking People in the News with Newsle, Semanticweb.com (Feb 23)
How To Search Twitter Users by Bio, Ann Smarty, Search Engine People (Nov 15)
Find people in Twitter by searching for keywords on their profile pages. That's the main premise. Ann Smarty then shows how.
Ellen Naylor, a "competition detective" mentioned two tools for searching for people - iSeek and 123People - in her list of My Favourite Tipples in Freepint.
"While iSeek is a general purpose search engine, I like its ability to organise search results when I look up people. It organises the results by topic, people, places and organisations. It's a quick place to learn about a person before you call them, but doesn't include social media. I think 123people does a good job of providing an individual's social media presence."
See article for more - "Here are a few places I look to locate people who are knowledgeable about the topic or company I am researching. "
Can You be Cyber-Stalked? The 30-Minute Google Challenge, By Patrick Miller and Ginny Mies, PCWorld ( Jun 26, 2011 )
This article shows how easy it can be to get information about people who participate on the Internet through postings and social networks. Google is a start, but there is also Pipl.com and Zabasearch as meta-search people finders.
Unless you really want people to know about you, keep all accounts private and use different usernames and handles.
Zoominfo moved to a new three-tiered platform a few months ago that enables people searching and business finding. Information on people is colelcted from crawling the web, direct contributions by users and the businee community. The database now has 50 million people and 5 million businesses.
There are five services:
+ ZoomInfo Directory - users can manage own profile
+ ZoomInfo Pro - advanced search and alerts
+ ZoomInfo Community Edition
+ ZoomInfo CRM - access through others
+ ZoomInfo Enterprise
See the blog entry ZoomInfo introduces new business information platform (Sept 2010)
Free People Searching (With the Occasional Price Tag), Barbie E Keiser, Online (Nov / Dec 2010)
Get some tips, tools and advice for finding people. In some ways it's getting harder - people use cell phones and aren't listed, or people are concerned about privacy and are much more circumspect. But as this article shows, there is the surge in social networking to form a whole new set of people search tools.
+ Use a telephone directory. Whitepages are online but watch out for the ads to use for-fee lookups. There are other ways of getting company phone numbers from their websites and contact page.
+ Online business databases - Dow Jones, Hoover’s, and OneSource
+ Social networking - jigsaw.com, netprospex.com
+ Collect your own sources for your industry - good advice.
+
9 Awesome Search Engines That Aren’t Named Google, by Kipp Bodnar, Hubspot Blog (Sep 9)
These are special purpose search engines - and some are more service than engine.
+ Hunch - requires that you login with Twitter or Facebook (and you agree that it can watch what happens in either place) - then it gets to know you more through questions with the promise of being able to give you good answers to your questions about life (or roughly that).
+ Yelp - local search for services - very popular. There is a Yelp.ca.
+ Flickr - images
+ Searchtastic - search tweets - shows user and tweet - picks up historical.
+ Collecta - real-time search - can select on type
+ Clipblast - YouTube video search
+ Pipl - good people search engine
+ Simply Hired - job search - even in Canada
+ Wolfram Alpha - numbers and computations - and more - read the WA blog.
How to Scope Someone Out Online, Hillary Rhodes, PC World (Jun 27)
There are ways to assess someone before investing time and money into a face-to-face meeting.
+ web search - obviously
+ people search - such as Spokeo which crawls 40 social networking Websites and other sources of public information.
+ video conferencing - or video submission
+ social networking sites - asking the right questions.
6 Most Powerful Search Engines for Social Networks, by Steven Campbell, Make use Of (June 1)
There may be times you only want to seach social networks - check the buzz, find a person, get blog and microblog postings. Turn to search engines that search those sources.
+ SocialMention - comprehensive metasearch with alerting capalibity. Can get sentiment analysis on topics.
+ yoName - find the name and the networks where they are listed.
+ snitch.name - search popular networks, other tools, some academic and government.
+ Folowen - covers 27 social networking sites.
+ Samepoint - follow a conversation - get snippets and source.
+ Google Social Search - yes Google has a social search that will show in the left rail if you have developed your social contacts through GMail.
Resources of the Week: International Telephone Directories, Resource Shelf (Mar)
International telephone directories are a starting point for finding a telephone number but they are of mixed quality - and you need to know a lot about the person to match up name with location.
ResourceShelf Shirl Kennedy is even more skeptical.
"I have yet to find a collection of international phone directories online that really wows me. Many of them are riddled with dead links and/or pointers to questionable pay services. But if you click through enough of them, every once in awhile you find what you need.."
Anyway, anywho - she lists seven.
Whoozy is a new search engine for people and for companies.
It does a meta search on:
+ Social networks: Twitter, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace, Classmates, Xing and ZoomInfo.
+ Search engines - several
+ Images and video: Flickr, Youtube, Google Images
+ Personal - compiles email addresses, facts, documents
View all sources here.
People are invited to register and build a personal profile.
Whoozy has gadgets - iGoogle and browser plugins. The 2 or 3 searches I ran came out quite well. Adding the browser plugin would be a good thing.
There are several country / language versions (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, UK, and the US) suggesting that Whoozy is based in Europe.
I think this one is a winner. But you still have to know a fair amount about the person to choose from the results.
Steven Cohen wrote about people finding in two issues of Information Today.
People Finding 2.0 - (May2009)
+ about using social networking sites - especially LinkedIn - good for employment histories and educational background. Might also be able to deduce employees in a small business or hiring practices by a company.
+ ZoomInfo for biographical information on people and profiles of companies. Need to know something about the person to pick from the results.
+ Internet Archive - might be able to look up a firm's website (have to have url) and dig around.
People Finding 2.0 Revisited (June 2009)
+ there are some specialized metasearch engines.
+ yoName - gathers information from 36 sites - search by email, username, phone number or name.
+ Pipl.com - claims to search deep web. Does have an uncanny way of pulling up information by username. Effective with telephone numbers too.
+ Whostalkin.com (Note resemblance to who's stalking?) - not really a people searcher - more for finding conversations. From the about page: "WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. Whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name; Whostalkin.com can help you join in on the conversations that you care about most." Searches blogs and microblogs.
+ Person Langenberg - new to me - all-in-one page with search boxes for several social networking site and some white pages (AnyWho).
25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World, FinderMind (June 3)
Has following sections:
+ Find People Online – Search if a Person is present on the Internet
+ Find Classmates & Workplace and Military Friends
+ Find People using White Pages Directories
+ Find Maiden Names and Relatives
+ Find People using Public Records
+ Find People Using General Search Engines
Boost your ego with a Google profile, Pandia (May 4)
More encouragement to manage your Google profile - "If you publish a personal web site or a blog and follow our search engine marketing advice, you should manage to rank first for your own name in Google. The main exceptions to this rule are for celebreties and people with very common names (like John Smith)."
Intelius Buys People Search Engine Spock By Joseph Tartakoff, Paidcontent (Apr 30)
"The purchase of Spock will give Intelius an entry into the search market for unstructured data since Spock pulls its results from social networking sites and blog posts. By contrast, Intelius specializes in providing people search results and background checks based on data from public records. Spock’s model is partly advertiser supported, with basic information like job titles and some photos available for free and more comprehensive results available for $19.95, while Intelius charges for all of its results."
Hoping To Improve People Search, Google Launches “Profile Results”, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Apr 21)
When people Google you, you want to be seen in the best light. Google will let you influence that through Google Profiles.
"Since the end of 2007, Google has allowed people to create Google Profile pages for use with certain Google services. For example, if you created content in Google Maps, your Google Profile let you share who you were with others using that service. The same profile also served to identify you when using the completely different Google Reader service.
Now Google Profiles are going beyond Google’s own services. They’re being promoted as a way for people to tell the world who they are and, to some degree, being offered as a way for people to claim their identity in Google’s main search results."
So - back to building another profile page.
People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets…And Tell Anyone by JR Raphael, PC World (Mar 10)
This is a chilling article on how much the social search engines can find out about you - including Amazon wish list, music preferences, political contributions (in the US), photos of family (if you make them public) and much more.
The editor enriched the article with notes on actual discoveries of very personal information.
There is some "deep web" in this - the engines specialize in digging into the sources and some in using "linguistic analysis" to improve the results.
Spokeo goes a step further and will monitor activity of your contacts through blogs, video sharing, image sharing, playlists, wish lists, social networking services.
Engines mentioned:
+Spokeo - searches 41 social networks
+Pipl - claims use of "advanced language-analysis and ranking algorithms"
+CVGadget - kind of meta-searcher
+Also - Rapleaf, a for-fee service for gathering and consolidating information on a person - see demo of its use for contacts through SalesForce.om
Main message: "Whether they target businesses or individuals, the services have one thing in common: Unlike the public record-driven search tools of the past, the new people-tracking utilities build a highly detailed dossier about you solely from information that you yourself published--a circumstance that may give you a distinct feeling of discomfort."
Companion article: People Search Engines: Slam the Door on What Info They Can Collect, JR Raphael, PC World (Mar 10)
"Take these steps to stop the new generation social search engines from telling the world everything about you."
3 ways to find people on Twitter, Pandia (March 7)
There is no end of articles on Twitter. Pandia writes about three tools that can help in finding people using Twitter, and comments on the features Twitter itself has.
Reunion.com and Wink tie the knot as MyLife by Caroline McCarthy, Webware (Feb 24)
New look and name to the Wink people-search engine - it's now MyLife - claims over 750 million profiles. You have to join to find yourself or anyone else.
"Back in November, people-search sites Reunion.com and Wink announced that they would be merging, and now it's happened: the sites have rebranded as MyLife, which can search over 60 social-networking sites (over 750 million profiles, the company says) and other information resources on the Web."
People Information: Finding Accurate, Authoritative and Well Organised Data by Donna Fryer, FUMSI / Freepint (Jan 2009)
For information about people, sure - search the web, but use the fee-based databases: Factiva, Dialog, and Lexis Nexis. Shows examples with syntax for the querie.
"Going back to the days when things were simpler and you could rely on only having to know search parameters in fee-based databases, searchers need to keep in mind that database searching is often a better alternative to Web research and we need to reacquaint ourselves with the ‘Big Three' (Factiva, Dialog, and LexisNexis) fee-based database offerings. In many instances, people information can be ‘user-generated', skewing its accuracy. Often the fee-based databases have a higher instance of accuracy because the information comes from authoritative source material."
Pipl.com: People Search Engine So Good, It Will Scare Your Pants Off, by Roi Carthy, TechCrunch (Jan 29)
Pipl is gaining recognition for its people search capabilities, especially in the US.
"It produces not only links to all of your profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr. It finds mentions of your name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes “quick facts” about the person."
It has 'deep web' capabilities - penetrating databases and digging deeply into a site beyond the reach of a standard search engine.
On searching on my name I was astonished to see a record from Amicus of a co-presentation I did in 1995 on business information resources on the Internet. However, you really need to know the person well enough to pick through the results.
How to Search for People Across Many Social Networks by Ann Smarty, Search Engine Journal (Jan 28)
Two new search tools for searching across social media
+ Snitch.name - get snapshots of profiles
+ Yoname.com - has less well known social networks (how many of these are there?).
Five Best People-Search Engines by Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker (Jan 25)
These five were proposed by readers at Lifehacker:
+ Pipl - "Pipl scours databases and indexes that standard search engines normally don't touch. "
+ Google web search - just be sure to add words to identify the person
+ Facebook - "By Facebook's count, 150 million active users frequent the site, about a third of which are in the United States."
+ Spock - multiple sources, notification options.
+ 123people - uses blogs and public profiles. Picks up images.
Other readers recommended
+ zabasearch - picks up public record information in the US
+ LexisNexis - premium research
To these add Zoominfo - smart search, finds and aggregates deep information to create profiles. Very good for identifying the person through professional connections. Advanced search allows narrowing to cities and states / provinces in the US and Canada.
Yasni: People Search, Stephen Arnold, Beyond Search
(November 14, 2008)
Yasni - another people search that searches across wide variety of resources.
"yasni a people search engine, just launched in the U.S. If you’re on the web, yasni supposedly will find you. But the search is on first and last names, and there are lots of “Jessica Bratcher”s out there. My yasni search returned 30 results, including hits on amazon.com, Facebook, MySpace, Google News and Blogs, Technorati, even criminal searches. But for more listings, they’ll send me an e-mail list within 24 hours."
It seems to be mainly US, but does offer to look in UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland - not Canada. Normally Canadians turn up through the US search, but Yasni isn't as strong as others in that respect.
People-search sites Reunion.com, Wink to merge by Caroline McCarthy, Webware (Nov 3)
"Social network Reunion.com has made a new friend: people search service Wink. The two have merged in a new deal that promises to make it dramatically easier to find people on the Web."
Search shift gives Google Profiles new prominence by Stephen Shankland, Webware (OCt 24)
People who use many Google services should probably pay attention to changes at Google Profiles . This might also be a way to beef up Web presence or tone it down.
"Google Profiles got its start as a way to centralize users' settings and self-descriptions. Now Google has now flipped a switch to let search engines discover people's profiles, giving the service a much greater social component. "
Why? Google said that -- "First, it lets people control their own presentation on the Web better--something that could well appeal to those who aren't happy that a vanity search on their name leads people to something embarrassing. Second, it could make it easier for people to find others on the Internet. "
123People searches the Social Web, Pandia (Oct 14)
"123People is a brand new people search engine ... It finds and identifies information from hundreds of publicly available sources on the web in real-time, to produce up-to-date results including from social network profiles, web links, email address, images and videos."
Tag line for 123people is "the European people search machine". Offers choices for Austria, Germany, Switzerland, United States and World. It does a good job at collecting video, images, addresses for Stephen Abram .
Everybody's an Expert: Finding Business Experts Online by Robert Brody and several others, Online Magazine (May / Jun 2008)
This excellent article is available through AllBusiness.com a D&B company.
"This article includes sources and strategies for locating people who appear to be experts in various fields and aspects of business. Many sources that offer lists of business experts focus upon selling the services of these experts. With the exception of resources listing expert witnesses, I have excluded most of those sources."
Outlines several basic strategies:
+ think about who might have this expertise - type of person, field - or who might be enthusiastic. Could be professors, writers, practitioners, speakers etc.
+ use directories = associations
+ who's who types of sources
+ business and social networks
+ government. In the US - usa.gov for federated search or go directly to directories of government officials.
+ find articles to locate authors or other people who were cited.
+ expert witnesses - several sites.
+ be sure to valideate what you find - get corroboration through other searches - meta / federated search engines can help.
Yahoo.com has a redesigned People Search. Search Engine Roundable - Yahoo People Search Redesigned (June 26) has screenshots and description. Good for looking up phone numbers and addresses in the United States.
Yahoo Canada doesn't have a people search.
Spying on your neighbor (June 8)
SnoopStation - "Pandia takes a look at a people search portal that claims they can get you US public records for free " -- and found it somewhat complex, and by this description, had a few traps.
Updated and New Resources: MelissaDATA Lookup Databases ResouceShelf (May 19)
Updates to Melissa Data Lookup Databases -- all-in-one address, email, phone lookup in the United States
Finding Out Who Owns a Small Business by Genie Tyburski, The Virtual Chase (May 5)
Addresses how to find the name of the owner of a small private company in the United States.
"There are a number of resources and research strategies for finding business owners. I'll outline several methods, starting with relatively easy approaches and free sources of information. Then I'll suggest several harder-to-accomplish tactics that still utilize free sources and I'll end by mentioning some commercial databases."
The Research Practitioner - Skills Day by Karen Blakeman (May 1)
Presentation by Karen Blakeman on Using the Web, given at ‘The Research Practitioner - Skills Day’ in London on April 23rd and 24th 2008.
Has many tips on searching for people through the main search engines and using Web 2.0 tools for social networks, blogs, photos. Includes many people search tools.
+ search for presentations to get more information about the authors. Limit to the ppt format. Also look at presentations sites - Slideshare, authorStream, YouTube
+ use syntax - searching intitle or inurl.
+ search different country versions of search engines - results will be different
+ look into the past at the Internet Archive
How To Find Someone's Date of Birth by Genie Tyburski, The Virtual Chase (Apr 29)
Describes a number of ways to find a person's date of birth in the United States. Some general concepts can apply in other countries.
New Lookup Database from Melissa Data: Email Location ResourceShelf (Mar 22)
New developments at Melissa - find the city, state, country & a map of an email address.
192.com reveals the true age of the nation Press Release (Jan 17)
192.com is a UK "people finder" that searches electoral rolls and company and director reports, the birth, marriage and death register, and business directories. 192 also has maps.
Now it is adding age and length of occupancy to its Electoral Roll listings.
"192.com today announces that it is the first directory to add age guide data to its 2008 Electoral Roll listings. This new and exclusive feature makes it even easier to find old friends because even though a person's address may change their date of birth always stays the same."
Resource of the Week: Finding People (via The Virtual Chase) By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor, ResourceShelf (Jan 15)
Describes the section in Genie Tyburski's Virtual Chase on finding people - "This collection of richly annotated resources is organized into five categories."
Is Googling narcissistic? by Anick Jesdanun, AP via Globe and Mail (Dec 16)
Nearly 50% of US Internet users have looked for information on the Web about themselves. And 60% of Internet users don't worry about information that is online about them. Some likely cultivate it since some people need an online persona for work purposes.
53% have looked for information about other people, excluding celebrities.
"In many cases, the search is innocuous, done to find someone's contact information. But a third of those who have conducted searches on others have looked for public records, such as bankruptcies and divorce proceedings. A similar number have searched for someone else's photo."
Findings are from a recent Pew American and Internet Life report - Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency
Sullr - look up phone number and get address and map. Available for the US, Argentina, Belgium, France, Italy. This is part of Panicozoo keen on developing a number of applications.
I think the Sullr kind of site or service will encourage people to get unlisted numbers or switch entirely to cell.
Telephone Directory Searching and Attempting to Find Out Someone’s Age (For Free) ResourceShelf (Dec 11)
Has caveats on using online phone directories - out of date being one of the major problems.
Mentions Argali as a better service.
Whitepages.com is a big directory serving the US and Canada. It sometimes shows an estimated age for people (at least those in the US). I've seen job title and company too. Whitepages must be getting this from somewhere - maybe USSearch.com.
Google Search Finds Wife With "Dead Husband" In Panama City by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Dec 6)
Wife of man who turned up suddenly after years of being thought dead was seen in a photo online with him in Panama a year ago. Be careful what you upload.
Mining Social Network Sites for Personal Information by Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch. Virtual Chase (Nov 17) - from Internet Fact Finding For Lawyers (July / August 2007)
Advises legal researchers to "mine" the social networking sites for information people post about themselves. Does not describe how to do it.
Controlling Your Online Identity. Wink, Wink!, TVC Alert (Nov 12)
Refers to Take control of your online identity, with Wink in CNet News (Nov 7) - and clarifies - you may be able to suppress information about you in Wink but since Wink indexes the Web you still have a problem.
This would also apply at any of those people search engines where you can register and "correct" - such as ZoomInfo.
People Search Engine Wink Rocks! Alt Search Engines (Nov 9)
Reports on changes at Wink, a people search engine that uses social networking sites as well as other means.
"Wink allows users to claim and control their search profile on the Wink People Search engine and gives the owner of each profile complete authority to edit, correct or remove any content — photos, tags, labels, descriptions, links or feeds — in their profile. This helps them prevent false or defamatory information from persisting, and lets them present themselves as they’d like to be seen."
Wink also has a partnership with ZoomInfo to access its 38 million profiles.
Resources: Expert Witness Research TVC Alert (Oct 17)
Several resources in this issue of TVC Alert from Genie Tyburski that relate to finding expert witnesses and experts. I'm surprised to see the Zuula metasearch engine on this but it is very good for quickly viewing results from Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.
Testing the People Search Engines, Mike Gunderloy, Web Worker Daily (Sept 20)
Gunderloy tested 4 of the new people search engines: Spock, SquidWho, WhoZat, and Wink; and compared results to Google. Dismal results except at Wink (and of course Google). The author makes the point about Spock that if you're not a joiner you won't get on the list. I will go further and say that if you want to be found you'll need a profile at a social networking site (LinkedIn, Facebook etc) and also the time to check these tools and update what comes up.
Spock: People Search With A Man + Machine Approach by Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land (Sept 19)
Many people are writing about Spock. This is a people search engine that looks at social networks and the web and invites contributions from the community.
"With Spock, you can search on a person's name or a keyword that may be associated with a person, and are returned a list of people with associated tags, photos, and web sites. From there, you can drill into more information about any of those aspects, add information of your own, or browse to people who are related in various ways."
Squidoo Gets Into People Search by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch (Sept 16)
Squidwho from the makers of Squidoo has a people search. And if it can't find the person it will propose ways to build a page. Great - except the sources are very limited. It looks in Wikipedia, Flickr, Yahoo News, and asks for more information through a comment box.
"Squidwho provides similar features to competitors including Wink, Spock, PeekYou, WikiYou and Zoominfo. Pages include a short biography, Amazon products (where applicable), YouTube videos, Flickr shots, latest news and RSS feed data from appropriate sites."
This is probably great for setting up stuff about yourself - assuming that you have any time left after developing profiles at social networking sites.
Searching for Humans By Erica Naone, Technology Review (Aug 20, 2007)
New services for finding people:
+ Spock makes use of social networking and uses human and machine intelligence to tag people.
+ Zoominfo - indexes web content. People can update their profile if they provide a credit card number.
+ Wink - search by location and other variables
Various websites are trying to make it easier to find friends and colleagues online.
People Search Tools Populate the Web by Paula J. Hane, Newsbreaks (Sep 1)
Gives a quick update on the people-search services that have sprung up: Wink, Spock, Pipl, PeekYou, LinkedIn, and ZoomInfo (not new but getting bigger)
This posting at Mashable on Social Search listed a few more.
Paula Hane doubts that so many can survive. I agree - I find most are weak and are mainly for finding people in the US.
Resources - People Searching , Genie Tyburski, TVC ALert (Aug 7)
Tyburski has another people search tool - Pipl People Search, powered mainly by Google. However, the "about" page indicates that Pipl also picks up from searchable databases such as Hoover's, Flickr and MySpace, to extract person-related information.
I saw entries from icq, yahoo profiles, infospace, scirus, and A9 Lite (from Amazon).
Beta: Spock, a People Search Engine, TVC ALert (Aug 7)
Finds that the new people search engine - Spock - can produce impressive results - if you have the patience to wait for Spock to respond.
Also see - "Have You Spocked Yourself?" New People-Oriented Search , PC World (Aug 8)
My test showed it drew heavily from MySpace.
ZoomInfo – People Finder and Company Intelligence Tool by Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch (Jun 27)
Detailed analysis of job search and company search at ZoomInfo - a vertical search engine about people and businesses.
"ZoomInfo has over 35 million people profiled, and its jobs info is provided by Indeed.com, which aggregates job listings from some of the biggest names in job search, so the list here is probably quite complete. On the company search side of things, ZoomInfo has data on 3.8 million companies. "
MySpace used for background checks, BY KIM KOMANDO, Florida Today (June 26)
Tips on learning more about people through web searches - the web search engine, using social networking spaces, public records, alumni associations, and licensing boards.
Pipl - A People Search Engine by Phil Bradley, Search Engine Land (May 15)
" Pipl is a people search engine that tries to be a little different. Rather than just go off and hunt for email addresses, this tries to search through the deep/invisible/hidden web to return content that other search engines are going to miss. The interface is simple - type in first name, last name, city, state and country, then let it go to see what it'll find."
You still need to know a lot about the person to be able to pick out the bits about the person you're looking for.
You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well -- Abigail L. Garvey Wilson
Emerges From Obscurity; Millions of John Smiths By KEVIN J. DELANEY, Wall Street Journal (May 8) [free article]
Some people just want to be found.
"Some people have taken measures to boost their visibility online, including creating listings in professional directories and paying companies to help them appear more prominently in search results. Parents-to-be routinely plug baby names into search engines to scout out the online competition. Some actors and musicians weigh the impact of less unique stage names."
War Of The People Search by Michael Arrington, Tech Crunch (May 9)
Wink, Spock, and ZoomInfo find people through Google, through social networks, and direct signup. Learn more from Michael Arrington's account of a panel discussion he moderated.
Which one is best? "Zoominfo is a solid business, but elicited little enthusiasm from the attendees at the panel this evening. Press release quotes and corporate bios just don’t get these Silicon Valley types fired up. Spock is yet to launch and has the benefit of controlling its messaging and user experience for the time being. Controversy sells, and the first few profile disputes are sure to bring lots of traffic to the site. But until it launches there’s just no way to effectively judge it. Wink is a solid search engine but people are still digesting the “bad” news of its product shift away from more traditional search and it’s stockholder buyout. "
Google helps make public records available, by Dibya Sarkar, Business Week (Apr 30)
Google is providing free consulting and software to "Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia -- to remove technical barriers that had prevented its search engine, as well as those of Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., from accessing tens of thousands of public records dealing with education, real estate, health care and the environment."
Be aware -- "Despite the obvious benefits of this Google initiative for those conducting Web searches, privacy advocates said they are worried about unintended consequences, cautioning that some records may contain personal and confidential information that should not be widely available."
Exclusive Screenshots: Spock’s New People Engine by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch (Apr 11)
I think Spock should be the name of a baby search engine, but it will be for finding people through use of the increasingly busy social networks and crawling the web to identify people and their connections.
"They are slowly indexing the entire web , which is no small feat, but focusing on important hubs of people information like blogs, wikipedia, photo sites and, of course, social networks. Each person discovered by their search engine is run through a process of de-duping (for people with identical or similar names) and given a permanent profile page (see screenshot of former President Bill Clinton’s profile to right - click for larger view). Spock auto-creates tags for individuals based on the information they find."
ZoomInfo does something similar but focuses on business and industry. But, as this article notes, "People search is a space that went from nowhere to crowded, fast. Wink changed direction and launched a people search product last November. Also in this space is Streakr (yet to launch), ProfileLinker, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and Upscoop.'
Telephone Info Databases: Cell Phone? Landline? Telephone Company?, ResourceShelf (Feb 5)
"Two databases that can assist in helping the user determine if a phone number is a landline or mobile number."
PhoneValidator can correctly identify Bell Canada line vs cell. It connects to whitepages.com to do a reverse phone number lookup but won't be able to find an answer for Canadian phones.
FoneFinder is a partial search that identifies the geographic area and phone company / provider.
For reverse phone lookup in Canada stick with Canada411.
Canada411 can also tell you if a number is a cell phone and from whom. For your search you'll see -- "is a cell phone based in Toronto, ON
The registered service provider is Bell Mobility**. Detailed listing information is not available."
It's never been easier to be your own detective By Jolayne Houtz, Seattle Times (Jan 30)
Pointers on doing background checks on a person (including yourself) and guide to online tools and resources for doing background searches on a person. Mainly geared to people in Washington state and specifically those public-records sites, but has advice of use to everyone.
Has chart for Washington state on Where to find the information [pdf]
Good tips for using web search engines - Guerrilla snooping
WhitePages.com Expands People Search, Clickz (Jan 24)
" Expanding further from its phone directory roots, WhitePages.com has added third-party results from Web search, public records, and professional profiles, and a fledgling e-mail search product."
Of interest: "The company has also begun indexing e-mail addresses from third-party opt-in lists for a premium service that lets users get in touch via e-mail for a fee, without knowing the destination address. " -- Sounds like the old Infospace email search.
Wink Launches “People” Search, ResourceShelf (Dec 3)
"Wink, a federated or metasearch type search resource that allows users to search multiple social search tools (del.icio.us, Digg, Yahoo MyWeb, etc.) simultaneously has recently added a new feature that allows users to do the same type of thing with multiple social networking services including MySpace, LinkedIn, and Bebo, with more to come."
Find old friends online By: Jennifer Gruden, 50Plus.com (2006) -- Tips on how to find friends online using web search, phone directories, associations and classmate sites.
A9 adds people search from ZoomInfo, Pandia (Jan 20) - Here's another reason to use A9 - the convenience of being able to search for people through Zoominfo. However, it is still better to go directly to Zoominfo for more search options.
People Search Engine, Zoom Info, Adds New Services and Features, SEW Blog (Dec 6) - ZoomInfo, which builds profiles on people from information it gathers from various web sources, is up to 27 million profiles and has a company search options. Gary Price warns that without "authority control" users must be very careful in using this - accuracy is suspect.
Keeping Yourself Out of Web And Other Databases Gary Price, SEW Blog (Oct 3) - comments on an article that blames Google again for carrying personal information about people.
"Trying to remain completely and totally private in the United States might be possible. Very difficult, but I guess possible."
Zabasearch.com has caused quite the flap online because it makes it even easier to look up public information about people in the United States. You can get address and satellite photo, telephone, birth date (not necessarily correct from what I've seen), and, for a fee, access to a "background" check. It's a "dossier" on a person. One person said it was "Google on steriods". This has set off some alarm bells.
Can We Stop Zabasearch -- and Similar Personal Information Search Engines?: When Data Democratization Verges on Privacy Invasion By ANITA RAMASASTRY, Findlaw's Write (May 12)
"In this column, I will address several questions: Why Is Zabasearch currently legal in the United States? And should it remain legal? Or should legislatures and courts prevent such records (or at least some types of personal data) from being searchable online?"
Eliyon Renamed Zoom Information with New Consumer-Oriented Strategy to Match by Barbara Quint, Information Today, Newsbreaks (Mar 21) -- Eliyon who was making a name for itself for compiling information off the web about all working people has opted for a name change -- ZoomInfo.
"ZoomInfo creates 500,000 new summaries and updates 3 million existing profiles each month, tapping into millions of corporate Web sites, press releases, electronic news services, SEC filings, and other online sources. It also produces 1.5 million summaries for both public and private companies."
"Distribution channels for ZoomInfo include Business.com, Find.com, HighBeam Research, Lycos, and The Wall Street Journal's CareerJournal.com."