Friday, March 07, 2008

Using Google Phonebook to find Contact Info and Directory Listings

Finding People is one of the trickiest tasks on the internet.

Finding fellow Affinity staff is easy—Use the Phone Book on the Intranet, or Outlook. But sometimes we need to locate contact info for people not on staff. The AT&T White & Yellow Pages on the Intranet only covers The Fox Valley. What if the person or business lives beyond the Fox Valley?

The Internet offers many directories that allow you to search, but often require payment to see the results.

One free option is to use Google Phonebook. Google’s phone directory for business and residential listings is integrated into the Google Search Engine.

To use the Google Phonebook directly, type phonebook: before your search.
To find the Smiths in Oshkosh, type phonebook: smith Oshkosh



This will get you a list of all the Smiths in Oshkosh, complete with their phone numbers, street addresses and maps. Since Smith is such a common name, you’ll probably want to give Google a few more clues (first name or initials, zip code, state, phone number) to help zone in on just the Smith you’re looking for.

Google pulls this info from local phone directories and internet phonebook searches already publicly available. To have your residential phone and address information removed from the Google PhoneBook, click here.
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Still can’t find the person?
It may be that the person has a cell phone. Cell phone numbers are not listed in public phone directories.
The person may have an unlisted number.
Perhaps the person’s home phone is in someone else’s name?
Perhaps they live somewhere else?
Sometimes the numbers listed are outdated.

Reverse Lookup
To do a reverse look-up (when you want to know who belongs to what phone number), simply type the phone number into the main Google Search box. (You don’t have to specify phonebook for a reverse lookup.) Use the this format for best results : 555-555-555.

Remember, cell phone numbers are not considered public information.

If you still can’t locate contact info, Library Staff may be able to help.