VCAO.net has tested 6 people search engines, and thoese search engines are claiming that they can supply some secret sauce that Google is missing in the people search arena.
PeekYou claims more than 50 million profiles in its index. However, the results of my search would indicate that the index isn’t necessarily up-to-date, with a query for “Adam Ostrow” yielding an old photo from my MySpace profile (which I thought had been taken down from public viewing!), and incorrectly identifying my hometown as College Park, MD, where I graduated school from three years ago. Missing from my page are the obvious Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social profiles, although the service does offer the ability for users to submit information about a person.
Wink workes on the major social networks and the Web to find people and it provides search filters such as location, age, and interests to help narrow down your search for common names (i.e. – “Mike Jones”). For myself, Wink pulled my LinkedIn and Friendster profiles, in addition to the LinkedIn profile of an “Adam Ostrow” imposter in New York. However, when you add “University of Maryland” to your search, the other Adam Ostrow is removed from the results, and a link to my updated MySpace profile is provided. Additionally, Wink provides Google results for the name search, which links to my personal blog, my Mashable author page, and a few press releases issued by my company over the years. The latest incarnation of Wink launched last September. VERDICT: Passes the taste test.
Spock first debuted at the Web 2.0 Expo in April. In addition to scouring the Web, the site also includes options for users to add information about people such as tags and relevant links. Spock did not seem to conclude that my LinkedIn and MySpace profiles are the same person, and thus created two separate listings for me. Additionally, Spock used old “About Me” information from MySpace to create my biography. On the plus side, Spock did pull the most relevant information from my LinkedIn profile to assign tags – my title and industry. It would appear that the site still has some work to do in pulling data in from more sources and connecting the dots between profiles of the same person.
ZoomInfo claims more than 35 listings in its business-oriented directory. It is focused more on tracking your career and the different places you’ve worked. The results go more than a decade into the past, with an “Adam Ostrow” search going all the way back to the very first web page I created in middle school, a tribute to my favorite baseball player Chipper Jones on Geocities. Digging a little deeper, when you click on my profile, you see information about my business, although the wrong address and phone number is provided. For more common names, your best bet on finding relevant information is knowing the company the person is currently associated with. For example, clicking on “Michael Jones” of Userplane will provide you with information on him and his past occupations. We’ve previously raised some concerns over ZoomInfo’s methods and accuracy. Nonetheless, it found some info.
yoName searches the major social networks to return results in a tabular format so you can easily navigate between the different profiles that are found. The site was successful in finding my profiles on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and an archaic Yahoo account. yoName also allows you to do a public records search, powered by Intelius, though it will cost you money to see detailed results. We first reviewed yoName in April.
Ex.plode.us is a cross-social network search, allowing you to search for both specific individuals and people with certain interests on their supported sites. My most frequently used services – MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn – are not part of their search at this time, but ex.plode.us was able to locate my seldom used Flickr page. While it’s currently missing some of the more popular social networks from its search, Ex.plode.us does index people from a few sites that the other’s don’t, such as Greatest Journal, Jaiku, and Vox.. Kristen reviewed ex.plode.us in May.
