GENERAL SEARCH TOOLS

• GENERAL ONLINE SEARCH TOOLS:

 
1. General Internet and Web Resource Pages:


Internet Navigation Tools.

2. Search Engines:


To search the entire World Wide Web, useful general web search engines include the popular Web Crawler search engine and the excellent Alta Vista search engine (). Google () provides a particularly fast and efficient search engine based upon link counts.  Of course everyone knows about Yahoo.  If all else fails, try the popular search engine .
To use many search engines simultaneously, try Dogpile.  An even better metasearch engine that I have found to be very useful is ixquick ().

Inomics is the premier search engine that is specific to the field of economics.()

3. Search for a Person's E-mail Address:


To search for someone's e-mail address, phone number, or mailing address try the Internet Address Finder, Lycos's E-Mail Finder, or Netscape's White Pages.

4. Search for a Person's or Business's Address and Map Location:


To see something really neat, check out Excite's InfoSpace (). This amazing search tool will find address and phone number's of anyone having a listed home phone in the United States----and then will display a local city-neighborhood map showing you how to find the person's house! This site also can do a reverse search beginning from a known telephone number.  You also will find other services at that site.  A similar capability is provided by WhoWhere?  and USA-PeopleSearch.  If instead of searching for a person you are searching for a business, you can get similar search capabilities at InfoUSA.com, which also can do a reverse search.  InfoUSA.com also can search for individuals by a direct or reverse search.  In these regards, you may also find the map creation services of MapBlast and MapQuest to be useful. Links to both are provided in the Travel section of this web site.  You can find Yellow Pages listings for firms and white pages listings for individuals, along with reverse lookups, at Yellowbook.com.

5. Search for Other Public Records about a Person or Firm or House:


You can find out far more about a person or firm than just address, phone number, etc. on the internet now. Vast amounts of public records can be accessed online. In fact you can acquire a full background check that will search databases and display clean or troublesome histories of businesses and the people who run them, and you can access some of Dun & Bradstreet's most widely used reports covering over 39 million companies located throughout the U.S. and abroad. Some of these services can be acquired at no cost. If you need that kind of information, see KnowX.com or Intelius.  But be aware that these services can charge your credit card for information about other people with similar names to that of the person about whom you are seeking information, even when the information is about persons with difference social security numbers or dates of birth, etc.  In short you can end up paying for much of nothing.  Another such source is PublicRecordFinder.com.


If you would like an estimate of your neighbor's house, or your own, you can look at zillow.com, which may or may not have that information in your area.  You can use martindale.com to search for a Law Firm.  If you are in business and need skip tracing for deadbeats, you can use lexisnexis.
 

• THE OLD TECHNOLOGIES (phone, mail, etc.):


As the ultimate last resort, you may have to fall back on a regular old fashioned telephone or snail mail. In that case, you may find the Telephone Long Distance Area Code Decoder or the U. S. Toll Free Directory to be useful. Instead of regular mail or e-mail, you may wish to use Federal Express.