Do you need to locate someone and all you have is a phone number? Did you know that it is possible to take advantage of many online tools, some of them free, in order to do a reverse phone number search and find the name and address of the person that you are looking for.

The first thing you need to do is to determine whether or not the phone number of the person is a landline or a cell phone number. Fonefinder.net is a free tool that allows you to quickly find this out.

The next step is to use Google. One of the best sources to do a free reverse look-up for landline numbers is the Google search engine. If you type in the phone number in the format (XXX) XXX-XXXX, the name and address of the owner will often come up in the search engine results. This is often all that is necessary to find the information that you are looking for but if this does not produce a result then there are other tools to consider.

Some of these services are available for free. Here are a few to consider:

Anywho.
http://www.anywho.com/rl.html
This site also allows you to type in a phone number for free
and search for a matching name and address.

PhoneNumber.com
http://www.phonenumber.com/reverse_phone.xhtml

SmartPages.com
http://www.smartpages.com/whitepages/?wppage=reverse-phone

Whitepages.com
http://www.whitepages.com/1129/reverse-phone

Reverse Phone Directory.
http://www.reversephonedirectory.com/
This site allows you to search one phone number in several different online directories, including "White Pages," "Phone Number," and "InfoSpace."

Please bear in mind that the information is only available of the name of the person to whom the phone number is registered. Also none of these sites provide information for cell phone numbers or unlisted numbers.

Okay, so how then do we go about locating the owner of an unlisted number? And what about cell phones - is it possible to find out who a particular cell phone number belongs to? Reverse cell phone lookup has always been more difficult than reversing landline numbers.

Well you could consider one of the many commercial "private detective services" that will help locate someone for you. Prices vary but typically you could pay $85 or more for this type of service. Usually the company will offer a refund if they cannot obtain the information for you.

There is one another option and that is to become your own private detective! The key here is to learn how to access the various online databases that are used by private investigators, law firms, police departments, businesses and individuals all around the world. Examples of some of these online databases include State and County public records, Court records, credit reports and so on. These records will often yield the information that you are looking for.