It’s no secret that social media has transformed the way we interact with people. We are now able to contact people who live far away anytime we want to. We can maintain connections with people that we wouldn’t be able to do without social media. We’re also able to revolutionize the way we talk to each other. That’s not where it ends, though. If you want to find lost relatives or find relatives online, social media is the platform for you. With a few search engine tricks and the right keywords, it will take no time before you find a relative you’ve never met. Finding relatives of deceased friends and family members will also be easy with the innovation of social media. Here’s how you can do a free people search:
1. Power of Facebook
Right now more than 2 billion people are using Facebook. That number of people using the platform is mind-boggling, but if you want to find people that you want to stay in close contact with, this will be an excellent opportunity for you. Your relatives are most likely Facebook users, and this makes it easy for you to search for them through Facebook.
Just go to the search box on Facebook, and type the complete name of the person you’re looking for. Of course, the family members you’re looking for may share the same name with thousands of other users of Facebook, so don’t be surprised if the initial results will come up negative. To solve this, you can narrow down your search by using the filters in the Facebook search, such as the hometown, former schools, colleges and place of work. Those are the most common filters that will most likely screen out those names of persons that are similar to the people you’re looking for.
2. Facebook Groups
There’s also a good way to find your family members using the Facebook groups available on this particular platform. Right now, you can find numerous Facebook groups dedicated to a certain family name. These Facebook groups usually do this to gather around the possible family members that share the same family name. The administrators of these Facebook groups will have easier access to these people in case they have events to invite them to or if they want to build some family tree. With this, it seems that Facebook will be a nifty complementary supplement you can use to assist your genealogical research, along with the traditional forms that you find offline, such as going to local courthouses and libraries, as well as digging through records made available for public domain.
3. Use Major Search Engines
Another right way to keep in touch with your family members is by acquiring the services offered by major search engines, such as Google and Bing. Search engines are the best, most stable and expansive platform tools you can use to keep in touch with long lost family members. Google is one of the leading search engines where you can start your search.
However, not all search engines deliver the same results, so make sure you understand all the other search engines, too. They’re not all identical regarding the results they deliver because they differ in their database.
Some of the search engines you can start would be Yahoo, AOL, Duck Duck Go, and Bing. There are also meta search engines to do advanced searches online for family members that you have never met. Some of those search engines include Dogpile, WebCrawler, and MonsterCrawler. These meta search engines can use what is called a Boolean logic to help you get the right information of your family members, instead of just random junk that won’t lead to good results.
3. Hire a Private Investigator
You can save yourself the hassle of learning how to make most of these search engines and just hire a private investigator to do the hard work for you. When choosing the private investigator, go for word of mouth. Don’t rely too much on anything that you read online because they might be paid advertising. They might not also be able to offer you the best reputation. If you stick to the trusted opinions from friends and family, you’ll get a more reliable private investigator that can provide quality results.
4. Access Genealogy Websites
You can also get a lot of information about your family members by visiting genealogy sites like Access Genealogy. Websites like this store old letters and Native American historical records that may give you an idea of your history. Military documents on websites like this can also enlighten you of how far your history has been recorded. Most sites can also offer a collection of links for you to use to have a more in-depth research on your distant family’s past. Family Researcher is one good example of this website that gives an interactive access to researchers on the history of your distant family members and their possible locations.
