There are quite a number of free and fee-based people search engines, but it’s simple to carry out a search for people on the web without paying anything for it. The most popular free search engines are listed below.

You can also use the best known Search Engines like Google and Yahoo, but because they aren't particularly focused they tend to return very broad results sometimes resulting in millions of results. If you haven't got a lot of time,you are probably better off using a specific People Search website.

The sites below are free and provide highly categorized and filtered results including photos from social media, social networks and the deep web.

• Wink
• WikiWorldBook
• Pipl
• Zoominfo

Tracing Friends

To trace friends or relatives using the internet, it is best to use a free internet people tracing service. The easiest one to use is on WikiWorldBook and its called Trace.This enables users who are looking for someone to create a unique website page which is indexed by the search engines like Google and Yahoo and then displayed in their search results (SERP’s). These results display whenever someone searches on that name, so in effect, you are using Google and Yahoo like noticeboards. This is quick and simple to use - you just type in the persons name and they do the rest.

Reasons for a People Search

Thereare many reasons to know what's on the web about you, your family, friends or acquaintances:

-Find old friends, relatives and work colleagues you have lost contact with.

-Know what prospective employers can find out about you on the internet.

-Find information about famous people like celebrities and politicians.

-Find out what old classmates or ex boyfriends / girlfriends are now doing.

-If you're dating - be prepared!

-Vanity (“self-Googling" or “ego-surfing" is common, but rarely admitted to).