Google UK is an excellent all round tool for finding people and information online. Whilst it is known for its ability to return web pages on a given topic, you can also use it no locate specific text on those pages.

Google indexes billions of pages from across the world wide web. These include publicly available social media profiles, mentions in newspaper articles, and contact pages for businesses and clubs. The one common theme is that each of these contains peoples names and that is just the start. It indexes far more than most will consider as places to look online. Public Registers are another excellent example such as the one here at Tracedex. Simply mentioning the name on a web site gives people the ability to locate that information.

To get started simply type a persons name into the search box and search. You may get lucky right off the bat or you may need to narrow your search with additional keywords such as location or interest. If you didn’t find the person, take a quick look at the images tab. Sometimes there’ll be an image in there of the person you are seeking, and you can follow that link to the web page.

Another option you can take is the advanced search. You’ll find this from the settings menu. This can help you refine what you’re looking for through a number of means. You can search for the exact phrase, use negative words to remove results you don’t want, and more. The other option you can take is to use operators. These are symbols that can define your search, such as enclosing it in quotes for an exact match “John Doe”.

Google UK is a great place to start when looking for someone, and if you learn to use the advanced features it will be even more effective.