Locating a friend can prove to be quite a challenge if you failed to obtain their contact information, or you lost the paper where it was written or their business card. However, there is no need to hang your head in despair or call in the private investigator when you have the Internet at your disposal.

The web has many free people finder services that may prove very valuable to you. The first and most obvious people lookup service is a standard search engine. To locate your friend with this resource, the trick is to refine your search as much as possible so the results that are returned to you are not overwhelming. You can focus your investigation by doing the following:

- Place important words that you would like exact matches for in quotations (I.E. your friend's name, city or state they live in, etc.)
- Combine two relevant details together, such as their name and location, or their name - location - name of high school, or name - career field -personal interests, etc.
- Try searching for their full name, using initials, married or maiden name, an alias, and so on.

If you become frustrated with a search engine, the next best option is to take your online search to a few social networking sites. Try the most popular networks first, such as MySpace and Facebook. These online networks are very popular, and provide you with different ways to look for the members on their sites. For instance, you can search for someone by their:

- Name
- High school and the year they graduated
- Career
- Interests/hobbies

Some even allow you the chance to find out if any of the people who's emails you have stored in your address book, or who are on your instant messaging system are members.

In the event you happen to locate your friend on a social networking site, you will need to become a member in order to access their profile or communicate with them. Joining is free, and you should be able to deactivate you account once you have contacted the person if you have no interest in maintaining a profile.

Also, another good idea is to try and locate your friend with a phone number lookup if you happen to have an old number of theirs. You might discover they still use this phone number or it belongs to a relative who may be able to help you find them.