What Is the Best Free Way to Look Up Cell Phone Numbers Online?
By Alberto Nolan
Finding information about a cell phone number or finding out someone's cell number via the Internet for free boils down to a process of first obtaining what information is readily available for free and then using that information to gain more details by systematically refining searches containing the data. Most look-up sites will give you nominal information for free and offer you more for a fee. Rather than paying the fee, you can use the provided information to track down what you are looking for.
Free Look-up Sites
There are a number of websites where you can look up information for free based on a cell phone number or a person's name and location. Unfortunately, these sites give you very little information for free. The most popular sites will give you the location that the area code of the number indicates if you look up a phone number. If you look up a person's name, it will give you information on where that person has had registered cell phone numbers and who their relatives are, but access to any other information requires fee. However, what is available for free can be very helpful in obtaining more details for free.
Filling in the Details for Free
If you are determined to get more information without paying for it or without leaving a record that you requested it, there are some searching tactics you can use to try to fill in the gaps. The process involves a series of increasingly narrowed and specialized Web searches. By using the information obtainable through the free look-up, like where the number originated, the person's location or their relatives, you can use clever search tactics to piece the puzzle together.
If you are looking up a number, the first thing to do is simply search for the number online and see what you get. You may find that someone has listed the number under his or her name on a personal or professional website or perhaps when answering an online ad. If your search returns results for similar numbers but not the exact one you are looking for, refine the search by adding quotation marks around the number. You can also try searching the number with various combinations of dashes, parentheses, spaces and periods in case it was listed in a certain style. If you still do not have the information you are looking for, take the search to other search engines. A good place to try is social networking sites' built-in search engines.
The search tactics remain basically the same if you are searching for a phone number for a particular name. You may try different types of queries, for instance "John Doe, phone number" or "Jane Doe, contact." The idea is the same: You are trying to get specific information on a website by systematically refining your search criteria. Based on the information you obtained from the free look-up, you can refine your search by location and the person's listed relatives. When searching by someone's name, social networking sites are especially fruitful.