Confounded in your efforts to locate the unlocatable? Google not working for you? Perhaps you need to dig a little bit deeper. Pipl is a deep web search service that focuses on finding individuals. Google searches web pages and Pipl searches the “deep” or “invisible” web – that part of the Web that is hidden for the most part from standard browsers. Stuff like documents in on-line databases. There is as much as 500 times as much information lurking in the deep web than floating on the surface. When it comes to people, the best information is generally found in such “unsearchable” documents and not on web pages. Using advanced language analysis and algorithms, Pipl can extract facts, contact details and other information from profiles, directories, scientific publications, court records and other sources.

The search box asks for the person’s full name, email, username or phone number. The information retrieved is not private – it is public information that is simply hard to get to due to its particular web form. If you are concerned about your own information, you can request to have your Pipl Profile removed from their site by clicking here. While their automatic removal is disabled, you will be given the email to manually request removal.

Of course I searched myself. And I found a staggering amount of information. Not that is not entirely surprising given the amount of time I spend on the web and the number of profiles I have filled out. That said, Pipl managed to tie a lot of disparate information about me into one page at their site. Needless to say, Pipl is pretty powerful.

If you want to stalk search for that missing someone, give Pipl a try. You never know what you might find.