Results may vary*
I’ve recently begun an alternative search for personal email addresses or phone numbers whether they be listed through White Pages, social networks, groups, online-offline communities, boards, conference attendee lists, or organization membership lists or a myriad of other possible ways personal contact information finds its way online.
Try searching by first name last name alone in a Google Search. I’ll use my name for this example.
Google Search Example: Jeff Driscoll
Google Search Structure: First Name Last Name
The first search contains results for that other famous Jeff, Jeff Driskel, (Florida Gators QB) though his name is spelled differently, it is an alternative spelling of Driscoll (Driskel, Driskell, Driscel, Driscell, Driscol, O’Driscoll, etc.) Thank you Google!
My next search will eliminate Jeff Driskel from the search. Either by putting Jeff Driscoll in quotes (“First Name Last Name”) or by removing Driskel results (-Driskel)
Google Search Example: “Jeff Driscoll” -Driskel
Google Search Structure: “First Name Last Name”
We already found our candidate from LinkedIn, so we don’t want LinkedIn to populate our results either.
Google Search Example: “Jeff Driscoll” -Linkedin.com
Google Search Structure: “First Name Last Name” -driskel -Linkedin.com
And we want to restrict results to location, in this case Jacksonville, Florida.
Google Search Example: “Jeff Driscoll” -Driskel -Linkedin.com Jacksonville
Google Search Structure: “First Name Last Name” Location -Linkedin.com
This returned a lot of results including where “Jeff Driscoll” works. We could have found his work email (jeff.driscoll@imethods.com) as it is not hidden on his small company’s website, but we’ve been through that experience. Notice that there is a Google+ result indicating that the individual likely has a Gmail account or Yahoo account.
Ideally through this process you find a profile handle used by the candidate. More often than not individuals do not change their handles across platforms. A Pinterest handle is likely the handle for an email address or Instagram account or gamer profile or YouTube account and so forth ad nauseum.
From the Google+ account I can confirm that it’s the correct Jeff Driscoll. Same location, education and employment history. Jeff Driscoll’s Google+ contains a link to his YouTube account, which in turn contains the users account info within the URL (http://www.youtube.com/user/jbd8988). JBD8988 being the user handle. I will now search Google with the JBD8988 handle to see what turns up.
It provides evidence of activity on Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, StumbleUpon, Instagram, Pandora, YouTube before diluting into License Plate results.
When searching JBD8988@gmail.com there are no results, but the Yahoo Answers results are hit again when searching “JBD8988@yahoo.com”. So I’ll deduce that JBD8988@yahoo.com is a personal email address for Jeff Driscoll at iMethods in Jacksonville, Florida.
This writing is intended primarily as a guide for contact information sourcing. There are many alternative methods that may serve you similarly or better or worse. It’s important to attempt various iterations, alternatives, and refinements. In the above case using the user handle generated social site results, but it can also return results for personal pages, online directories, etc.
Recently I’ve been starting with the following Google search to find social results and clues before diving deeper.
Google Search: “First Name Last Name” Location -mylife.com -intelius.com -whitepages.com -spokeo.com -linkedin.com -zoominfo.com -radaris.com
White Pages can be a valuable source of potential phone numbers and physical addresses (so removal is discretionary).
Go forth and source (responsibly!)
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