Online research is part of the detective work involved doing web design. Here’s a solution for people in the USA annoyed by people search and premium options when looking for friends, relatives, or acquaintances. Google just their name and most likely you will get results that only lead to paid options before you can discover details that allow contacting that person. Now go to the White Pages for people search for good old fashioned data without a premium price tag. Yes. Free.

I’m in favor of maintaining online identity security, yet published information from phone books or other common public records should not be sold just because you live 1000 miles away from the source. I stumbled upon the White Pages website quite by accident recently when wanting to contact a past business contact to interview as part of a new web design project.

I had all but given up on free lookups until I Googled their name and found their current residential address and phone number on the White Pages site. They do list paid sponsor ads in their result pages, yet at least the basic information was displayed at no charge which I thought was a thing of the past. The best part of the success story? All I needed was the name and state!