It’s possible to track down an old friend even if you don’t have more than a first name and city, which isn’t to say it will be easy. Social media, Google, and background check services can help you.
Even if the city is small, a common first name won’t take you very far. You need to try and gather as much information about them as you can. Where they used to live, work, and other details can be combined to search Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines.
If you remember that they worked at Apple, for example, you can combine their name, the name of the company, and the name of the city and search Google. You might get an employee listing or a career site with their details if you’re lucky.
You can build a search string if you’re able to remember their hometown, education history, employment history, interests, or hobbies. This will improve your chances of accessing current and relevant data.
Background Check Services
Most background check services will pull up sufficient details to help you find your old friend. They aggregate publicly available data from the web, which you’d otherwise have to look up yourself. When you start your search, you’ll get dozens of links to such services’ websites. Most of them will ask you to pay something or sign up to access a full report.
At this point, that isn’t necessarily something you need to do. Be aware of their marketing and sales tactics. Some of these providers do very slow searches to tempt you to sign up for quicker results.
In some cases, it might help to pay for a bit of extra information. Even with a free search, however, you’ll get a list of people with that name. This list might include any aliases, previous addresses, an approximate year of birth, names of relatives, and perhaps even a current location.
Most background check services will offer at least some of the details below, usually in exchange for a symbolic fee:
- Names of possible relatives
- Possible aliases
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Social networking accounts
- Real estate listings
- Home addresses
- Court records
- Criminal records
- Online posts
- Voter registration records
- Marriage records
If you don’t want to register with one of these services, there are options to search after paying a one-time fee. This might be a good option, but remember these fees add up, and you’ll need to search using at least three sites.
You could find your efforts to pay off. For example, you can use people search tools to do a phone lookup or to find someone in a specific location. You can search social networks if you remember their last name.
The Potential of a Photo Search
Even an old photo of them can help. Yes, they don’t look like that anymore, but you’d find information on their current whereabouts if they posted that picture online. Use Google’s image search tool.
Go to images.google.com, then click on the camera icon and upload the photo. Google’s image search service isn’t the only one of its kind. You can also use tools like Yandex, TinEye, and PimEyes. There is Bing Image Search and Pinterest Image Search as well. The picture might take you to the details you need.
Social Networks
You could find them using just their first name and their hometown or the last town where they lived on social media. Use their first name and the network they’re most likely to use to narrow your search down to one city. Additional information like their last workplace, where they went to school, and organizational memberships will help.
You can search for old friends by first name on Meta, formerly Facebook. In the process, you can search for mutual friends. This medium’s advanced search functionality can be very useful.
Enter their name in the box at the top of your feed and select a location from the left panel. You’ll get a list of users with that name in that city in the People tab. There will be friends at the top of the list, after which you’ll get friends of friends.
There are similar search options on other media. If you happen to have an old phone number or an email address, you can upload this information to further your search.
