Telephone and E-mail address directories
Strategy: Your news researcher may have a better way of finding people or businesses than these online phone books. But if you don't mind wading through lists of duplicate names, they might help when you're desperate. Remember that many of them base their numbers on the same regional telephone books.
Most now include e-mail address look ups. But many of the databases are out of date.
For search help, check out IRE Tip Sheet #899
from Nora Paul.
For more techniques to locate people, refer to pages 82-91 in The Reporter's Handbook, 4th ed.
InfoSpace
http://www.infospace.com
Combines maps, reverse tools, e-mail search and other features. Has listings of government numbers and includes phone books for several countries.Fone Finder
http://www.fonefinder.net
Use an area code and the exchange number to find the provider of the service for that phone number, for U.S. and Canadian telephone numbers. This can be a good place for finding out if a telephone number belongs to a cell phone. The information provided is only the company providing the service. It does not provide information about who is listed at that phone number. Finds the geographic location of any phone number in the world. You key in a phone number, and it will give you the city, state, country, a flag, map, and links to the area.Internet Address Finder
http://www.iaf.net/
An e-mail address finder. You can also use it as a "finger" to get more information on a person whose e-mail address you know.Anywho
http://www.anywho.com
Run by AT&T, it's also one of the few with a reverse directory. When you get the street you can click on it for neighbors' phone numbers, and it will draw a map when it finds the address.MESA
http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/
Based in Germany, MetaE-mailSearchAgent searches many of the popular e-mail lookup sites simultaneously.Whitepages.com
http://www.whitepages.com
This phone direction has easy-to-find links and reverse, area code and zip cop lookups at the top of the page.International Numbering Plans
http://www.numberingplans.com/
This free service identifies the geographic location where a phone number originates and what telephone company is responsible for that number. This service includes cellular telephones. It also offers a list of area codes and a list of international dialing codes.Switchboard
http://www.switchboard.com
One of the oldest phone directories on the Web. Also includes a map of the address and an e-mail address lookup.ZabaSearch
http://www.zabasearch.com/
ZabaSearch allows for quick access to records available in the public domain. Searches generate lists of available information gathered from sources such as court documents, phone listings, and real estate records.
Web address tracers
Strategy: Where you need to go when you're checking out who operates the Web site at any given URL. Good to check out when you're need basic information about those who are posting to a Web site when you're not sure you should trust.
WhoIs
http://www.betterwhois.com/
http://www.whois.net/
http://allwhois.com/
http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html
Sites that search official address-givers' records on who owns a site, including the city and phone number of the person who signed up for a site's Web address. It's much harder - but not impossible - to fake a Web address than an e-mail address. The arin.net site is good when all you have is the IP address of the site you’re looking for.
Search engines
Strategy: The links below will take you to some of the best search engines the Web has to offer, but each engine is only as smart as the user operating it. Be sure to take the time to read the help section of your favorite engine so you learn special syntax to hone searches and save countless hours of frustration.
For search help, check out IRE Tip Sheet #899
from Nora Paul.
http://www.google.com
This search engine has become so popular it is now a verb. Do you google? It has earned its reputation with search results that are ranked not only by how well they match your search terms, but also by how many other sites link to the pages that match your search. Click on the "Advanced Search" link to refine your searches, allowing you to search by domain or file type extensions. Also searches for images and has a news page.AlltheWeb
http://www.Alltheweb.com
AlltheWeb delivers comprehensive search results from more than 3 billion Web pages -- more than Google -- and integrates them with award-winning breaking news results from thousands of news sources and hundreds of millions of multimedia, video, MP3 and software files all within a single search result page.Teoma
http://www.teoma.com
Teoma provides better results because it goes beyond traditional page-ranking methods to determine authority, in addition to relevancy. To determine the authority or quality of a site's content, Teoma uses subject-specific popularity. Subject-specific popularity ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it, not just general popularity, to determine a site's level of authority.Excite
http://www.excite.com
This reorganized site now searches many of the most popular search engines at once, making it similar to AlltheWeb. It maintains its organization by category results, letting you hone in quickly to the most relevant sites for your concept.Altavista
http://www.altavista.com
Use the "Advanced Search" for powerful Boolean operators. This is a good one to use if you only want, say, nonprofit sites in your results (in that case, use the search term "url:org").HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com
Gives you lots of powerful tools, called filters, and a very big set of Web sites to search.
The Invisible Web
Strategy: The Invisible Web is made up of tons of information invisible to most search engines. That's because most of the information is stored in databases that cannot be accessed by the software search engines used to compile their indexes. Fortunately, there are a few sites that can help you get at this information.
To understand the Invisible Web, check out IRE Tip Sheet #1857
from Margot Williams.
Direct Search -- Search Tools and Directories
http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm
Direct Search, compiled by Gary Price of George Washington University, is a growing compilation of links to the search interfaces of resources that contain data not easily or entirely searchable/accessible from general search tools such as Alta Vista, Google and Hotbot. Although general search tools are essential for the retrieval of Internet-based data, often many do not realize that large amounts of information are not easily searchable and accessible via these search tools. This material has become known as the "invisible Web."CompletePlanet
http://aip.completeplanet.com/
CompletePlanet organizes the invisible Web by categories. It has become so popular that its servers sometimes get too busy to process search requests.INFOMINE
http://infomine.ucr.edu/
INFOMINE is an academic search engine, focusing on scholarly resource collections, electronic journals and books, online library card catalogs, and directories of researchers. INFOMINE is librarian built and the University of California, California State University, University of Detroit (Mercy) and other university and college librarians have contributed to building it.Scholar Google
http://scholar.google.com/
Another service from the search giant Google that does what basic Google doesn’t. It searches databases of academic papers that typical search engines do not. A good starting point for finding what academics are doing but rarely enter the public realm on subjects you cover. For much special Google sites and to see what they’re up to, see http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/.
Old Websites
Strategy: Companies and organizations update their Web sites all the time, but much useful information is no longer listed on the new pages. When investigating these organizations, check out their old Web pages for information they no longer post.
Wayback Machine
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Browse through 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.