If you need to locate a long lost friend colleague or relative in a hurry there are several free choices on hand for you.
The first, and most obvious place to start with would be your normal search engine, whether that is Google, MSN, Yahoo! or any of the other less known engines. This plan can work if the person you are looking for has produced a webpage about themselves, or has been wrote about on a web site by someone else. The big problem with this method is that unless you are trying to locate someone with a very unique name the search engine will potentialy have many answers and it would be hopeless to look through them all. For good example, searching Google for Anthony North gives back almost 17 million webpages, many of the results are people, some businesses, at least one motel of the same name and a St Anthony North hospital in Colorado. Also, if you do locate the individual you are trying to locate, as it is on a webpage you will most likely find a report on when they came last in a sportfishing contest or fell off a horse in an riding event, not information that will really help you locate them.

The second option involves signing up with social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, and looking for the person you want to locate on these sites. This Approach can also work as these sites only have results of real individuals as opposed to similar place names or business organisations, and you more often than not would see a picture of the individual which would allow you to confirm if you have located the right individual. However, although these sites receive users worldwide in their millions, Facebook for example is only used by approximately 14% of the US population, so your opportunities are still not good of discovering the individual you want, particularly if they don´t wish to be found.

The alternative method of finding someone is to use one of the many paid services like SearchPeopleUSA.net that access public records and databases throughout each State of North America. These services have direct access to millions of records on a web of multiple data sources. The results they provide when you search people will likely include the persons age as well as several recent locations so verifying you have located the correct person is easy. Like the two previous methods you can do a free search which take just a few seconds, and you only pay for membership to access the persons complete record if they have what you are looking for. As these services have information on approximately 90% of the US population, including such things as marriage and divorce records, conviction and felony records and property and housing information, it is probable you will find the individual you are searching for. The best thing about membership is that usually they allow unlimited lookups, so once you have the information you want you can quickly search information on neighbors also, as well as find out what other people can find out about you. Check with the website you choose before becoming a member though as on some sites you are only getting one report.

An excellent place to start would be a free search at Search People USA. They have instant access to some 1 billion records of recent and past information on over 225 million US residents. The data includes names and addresses, unlisted cell numbers, criminal history and civil court reports, property deeds and titles as well as much more data on almost anyone in all US States.