When researching on line, most people go to Google and types in a name, e-mail address or phone number. Sometimes this tactic turns up something valuable but usually it won't. Many times success is dependent upon the uniqueness of the person's name.
Good luck if you're trying to research John Smith from New York City.
Don't get me wrong, Google's a great search engine and in future posts, I'll talk about the ways I use Google to research, but when I'm researching someone, the tool I use first is pipl.com. Pipl allows you to search by name, e-mail address, username or telephone number. Unlike a regular search engine, Pipl searches the deep web, that part of the web that search engines don't usually index.
According to its website, Pipl's "robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources."
What I like about Pipl is that if you know a person's name and where they live, you can search and let Pipl do a lot of tedious work, the burrowing and sifting that's required to get a full profile of a person. Pipl is especially good at scouring multiple social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin. It also searches some public records simultaneously. But don’t be fooled. Pipl doesn't search all of these sites.
That’s because many public records sites are part of the invisible web. It's called invisible because it can't be "seen", searched and indexed by search engine robots. Therefore, don't think if you've done a Pipl search, you've found all the pertinent information about the person you're researching.
Pipl is a starting point. It'll give you lots of good information about the person you're researching. From the perspective of an on-line dater, it could give you the make or break information you need to decide if you want to date the person; are they married, do they have a criminal past.
Pipl will give you information that'll lead you to other facts about the person you're researching. It won't give you all the information about the person. It's not the end all of on-line researching. It's the beginning. Give it a try and see what you think. Search your own name and see what you find.
