How to Locate a Friend Online

You have made the decision to find your friend online. This is a smart choice, but if you have no idea how to go about your search, your bright idea may suddenly feel a little daunting. Don't worry; looking up someone online is actually a lot easier than you think. It's really all a matter of knowing where to search, and what to search for to achieve the most effective results.

Here are a few tips to help you along:

Creativity

Tip 1 - Start simple - use your favourite search engine to help you, but don't be afraid to mix up your searches. While you can lookup your friend's full name and hope for the best, it is better to look up their name in combination with another strong fact or detail that is relevant to them, such as:

- The city and/or state in which they live.
- Title of their career
- Name of work place
- Name of high school or college
- Interests
- Etc.

Furthermore, don't forget that by adding certain formatting such as quotations, or shuffling words around can change results.

Tip 2 - Check out what's popular - Social networking sites have grown in popularity over the past few years, and now many of these online communities have millions of users with their own personal profiles. While the idea of joining one of these places may not appeal to you, there is a high chance it caught the interest of your friend, and he/she joined. Therefore, you can try to locate friends by searching for them on this type of site (I.E. Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Plaxo, etc.)

Tip 3 - Number investigation - If you have a phone number that belongs to your friend, you can trace them by entering it into a free reverse phone lookup. If your friend's telephone number is not listed or belongs to a cellular phone, you would require a paid reverse cell phone tracer for location details, such as their home address.

Thus, it is quite simple to search online and locate your friend, as long as you have the right angle and are not afraid to think outside the box and explore your creativity.

How to Locate a Friend Online

Mary is a bookworm that loves to write about technology and ethical issues. You can check out her latest tech project at http://www.FreeCellPhoneTracer.com