What follow are a few tips about finding people via web. It can be harder than you think. Although many people access internet on a daily basis now, they often use screen names that are known only to their friends. Other people, particularly women, tend to change their last name once or more often during course of their lives.

Who is relatively easy to find on web?

• People who have become famous.
• People who post on internet under their real names.
• Academics and other people who publish articles and speak at conferences. Professors also tend to have personal web pages.
• Self-employed consultants and other people who own their own businesses.
• Senior management of companies, especially public companies.
• People active in community organizations.
• Anybody with a career that causes them to get written about, cited in articles, or quoted in press.

You have a slightly higher chance of getting good results if you enter first and last name as a phrase, surrounded by quotation marks. The middle name usually isn't important, unless person typically uses her middle name. If person typically uses his initials instead of first and middle name, make sure you search as a phrase when looking him up.

Warning: Entering names will frequently bring upon many hits on genealogical records. Instead of getting info on a living person, you'll find yourself staring at data about someone who lived and died a hundred years ago. Although it's great that so much genealogical data is available via web, these webpages can hopelessly muddy your chances of finding a living person using only her name.