I know what it takes to find someone when I’m handed only a phone number, and I know what makes for the best Reverse Phone Lookup Services. In my own line of work, phone lookups aren’t the only method I use, but I do use them on a daily basis, and separating the good ones from the poor ones can make all the difference in finding out who someone is from just a call. Today we will share the results for the best reverse phone lookup.
As a private investigator I work to help people catch their unfaithful spouses. One tool that I often use, and that I recommend to my clients as well, is a reverse phone lookup service. These simple systems allow you to find a name (and often an address) by simply typing in a cell phone or home phone number.
When you begin to look at these services there is one thing you will find: There is a huge range in quality when it comes to the best reverse phone lookup services available in the market. Once you go through a few and they don’t produce updated results, you may wonder – Does reverse phone lookup work?
Some systems have the most up-to-date databases, with huge lists that include millions of cell phone numbers. Other’s won’t even be able to find a number that’s been listed for the past five years. With that, let’s just start by talking about what a reverse phone detective is and is not.
First, a reverse phone lookup service is NOT the definitive solution to finding people. Although the good systems will have a huge database, they only work by phone number so they will only work to find people whose number you already have. It takes some work to find a legitimate reverse phone lookup with so many sites that have come about.
Second, NOT everyone will need a reverse phone lookup service. If the number you’re searching for is a land line, you can likely find the name by using your phone companies web site (at least try it first).
Third, a accurate reverse phone cell phone lookup is an excellent way to find out who has been calling. They can help you find out that cheating spouse, catch that prank caller, or simply find out who someone is before you answer.
Fourth, if you don’t take the time to choose the best reverse phone lookup service, not only are you wasting your money, but you might end up with bad information. An old database can give you the wrong name, the wrong address, and suddenly you’re worse off than when you started!
Since I recommend them to my clients on a regular basis, along with some friends, I took the time to evaluate the top reverse phone services available today. We based our evaluations on the following criteria.
- Ability to Find Numbers – Obviously our main criteria was on how many numbers the phone detective could recognize overall.
- Cell Phone Numbers – How many cellular numbers could the detective find? These generally aren’t listed so only the best databases will find all of them.
- Toll Free Numbers – Could the system give us information on 1-800 numbers that called us?
- Land Line Numbers – Was it able to provide information on land lines? Even those that weren’t listed?
- Amount of Information – How much information could we get with a single search?
- Up to Date – How current was the data gathered from all the above searches?
- Overall Rating – Based on all of the other criteria we gave each system an overall rating.
Testing the systems wasn’t difficult. To accomplish it we simply signed up for all of them, and the grabbed some phone bills, some cell and toll free numbers that we had written down, and started searching. Below you will find our results for the best phone number lookup.
BEST REVERSE PHONE LOOKUP REVIEWS
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#1 Rated Recommendation
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Highly Recommended2. Reverse MobileIn second place we have a service called Reverse Mobile. This one performed almost as well as Reverse Phone Detective, but it didn’t perform quite as well with the cell numbers or toll free numbers. Also, we had a few searches that provided out-dated information. When you use Reverse Mobile, you are presented with a decent data set for each search. Most searches provided a name, a location, and some even gave us an exact address. Out of a few hundred numbers searched there were really only a few that didn’t have data. Having said that, since Reverse Phone Detective out-classed this one, Reverse Mobile takes a solid second place. All in all reverse Mobile did perform well and takes second place as highly recommended. Since the cost is the same as our winner though, most people will be better off with our top pick. |
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Also Recommended4. USA Phone LookupTaking fourth place is USA Phone Lookup. With this one don’t let the name fool you, it was also able to find numbers in Canada, one of the Mexican numbers we punched in, and in general it performed well. Where this one fails a bit is with cell numbers. Out of 200 numbers searched (100 of which were cell numbers) USA Phone Lookup was only able to provide real data on about half of the cell phone numbers. Of the ones that it did find, it didn’t provide as much information on the users of those cells. USA Lookup is fairly new to the market. Given that, their database is done quite well, and hopefully they will improve over time. With the top two products on our list doing much better though, we had to put this one in fourth place. |
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Also Recommended5. Reverse Phone GenieThe last reverse phone lookup service that we are covering is called Reverse Phone Genie. If you were looking for a land-line only lookup service this one might make a good choice. For everything else though, any of the other four products on our list did better. Reverse Phone Genie was able to provide good data for land lines. With cell numbers, toll free numbers, or name searches the same wasn’t true. About half of our searches provided us with outdated data, and many of them yielded no results at all. This one did out-perform some of the other services we tested, so it is in the top five. With four other services that have this one beat, it wouldn’t be my first choice. |
