Find Relatives Online – How to Find Relatives Online

Aug. 6, 2009 - PRLog -- After conducting genealogy research you may find that you have a cousin or relative that you did not know about and from their name and date of birth you may want to trace them.

Tracing living relatives is similar to working on your family tree, you must work with the facts you have to find the information you require. It is interesting rewarding and once you have the “bug” you will want to keep tracing your relatives and old friends.

So how do you begin? The most important tools for finding relatives online are:

•   Pen and paper
•   Computer and an internet connection
•   Telephone

You need to keep a record of the things you do to locate your relative. You may be finding them for a few hours a week and it may take a few weeks so as obvious as it sounds you need to write everything you do down. You may end up phoning several people and so a record of who you phoned, what number you dialled and what information you received from the call is important.

So let’s get started. Let presume that you have the name of the person you wish to find and their place of birth and date of birth, these are the usual details that are recorded about a person and are usually what you will know about the missing relative. If you don’t have these details you may still be able to find the relative but it will be much harder.

There are many free people finder sites that you can use to help you locate people, some of these are specifically for finding people such as 123people.com others are for more general use but are extremely important to someone looking for their lost relatives such as

Google.
Again, you should make a note of all sites that you visit and collect the information from them, whether you write the information down or print the information from m the site is up to you, I believe that it is best to print out the information both for your records but also so you can see the information that has been in context to the other information on the webpage.

It is hard to list the sites that you will need to use as there are so many and until you have the name and details of the person you are looking for it is hard to tell what will be relevant but here are a few that will get you on your way:

•   Google
•   Friends reunited
•   Facebook
•   123people.com
•   Bt direct enquiries

Google should be the first site you visit as this can lead to other relevant sites that you cannot know about until you start your search. You should put the name of the person in to Google’s search box like this “The name of the person” the “ allows Google to search for the name as a whole and not search for things, this could lead you to local site if your relative is a involved member of a local community or has been in the local paper, it could lead you to an achieve site where you could find more information, the list of possibilities are endless  so Google should always be used as a starting point.

Friends reunited is now a free site so you can register and then search for people through their name and the school they went to. Over 6 million people are registered users on Friends Reunited so for UK based searches it is a very useful way of contacting people. Once you have found the person on the site you can contact them through it for free,

Facebook works in much the same way and has over 60 million users, Facebook is worldwide so helps if you are conducting a worldwide search. The down side to Facebook is you cannot see a person’s details until they have agreed to it so if you are not sure if it’s the right person it can be hard to verify information also because of the amount of users it is not uncommon for popular names such as Chris Brown to have many many matches making it hard to find the correct person. On the plus site lots of people add a photo so if you know what you relative looks like it can be very easy.

123 people give information about people to you for free but the information may not correspond to your particular relative, it may just be a name match. You should use this site but be cautious that you have the correct person and conduct further checks. The site contains a lot of American information.

Bt Direct enquires is a fantastic way to move your enquiry forward. It is specifically for the UK so you can really find gems of information. For example, you think your relatives surname is Beckham and they were born in Leeds. You can search all the Beckhams with a listed telephone number in Leeds. Once you have this list of numbers you can call on people who will have information for you. Just remember to explain who you are and what you are trying to achieve then ask for the information be respectful at all times even if the person does not want to help you. Remember to write who you have called down so you don’t call people twice by mistake.

Finally, enjoy the process of finding your relatives online I’m sure you will really enjoy it!

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http://www.findermonkey.co.uk/find-someone