Tag Archives: class reunions

Classmates & Alumni, Facebook, Name Searches, Women

Classmates & Reunions: Googling To Find Your Old Friends On Facebook!

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I belong to a worldwide Facebook group where droves of people try to search for childhood friends they haven’t seen in half a century. And as is often the case, the person they’re looking for has long since married, divorced, changed names, or relocated.

Worse, after 50 years of post partum, they may not even remember the exact spelling of the person’s name. Was their childhood crush on Allen Greenspan? Or was it Alan Greenspan?

And while we’re on the subject of finding lost friends, what about your ex BFF Mary Jane? Yes, the 6th grade prep school pal of yours who in 1966 you made paper doilies with. (The same one who swore on her mother’s grave that she would never, ever leave you…until of course, she and her beatnik boyfriend ran away to that hippie commune in Botswana.) So how are you ever going to find her?

The answer of course is FACEBOOK. With almost three billion accounts, chances are she has a Facebook page. Or, at the very least, she went to a school or worked for a company that still has one.

And this means when looking for someone, that you can either contact them directly. Or post on their old company page, their school alumni page or the page of one of their ex classmates. Yes, where time once used to be your oldest enemy, now suddenly time is your closest friend!

You simply make your posts, and let Google and Facebook do all the work to promote your query throughout the Internet. Sooner or later, your friend or one of her classmates may see your request (even when Googling for something else) and then reach out to you. All you have to do is sit back and wait! Chances are you won’t be waiting long, especially if the Facebook account is active with lots of followers.

Googling To Get Facebook Accounts
Facebook is great because you can reach an old friend without ever knowing their current phone number or email address. But Facebook is also so vast that most searches result in overkill.

Unless you’re looking for a rare name like “Fennan Nucleoplast” or “Biswol Apocalypse”, chances are you’ll be inundated with people of the same name, who in poor taste, subject you to profile photos of their dogs, their cats, their dolphins and the pets of their dolphins. This is a cardinal sin worthy of punishment. A Facebook profile should show the human face of the profile owner. There’s no need to clutter the Internet with pics of your favorite mongoose.

But fret not. This is where Google comes in. Facebook has so many bells and whistles (ways to search for people) but most of them don’t work well. Indeed, half the bells don’t ring, and most of the whistles blow silently. So don’t be married to Facebook groups or Facebook filters. But if you must use these, check out my blog Quickly Find Old Classmates and Alumni Through Facebook, Classmates.com, Linkedin and Google.

Benefits of Using Google To Search within Facebook

  • Google will suggest other spellings of the name
  • You can search by a range e.g. 1983 ..1987
  • You can refine your Facebook hits with other words
  • You can set Google to 100 hits per page for quick viewing
  • You can view the Google Cache to see an old Facebook page that has recently changed (no longer shows what you’re looking for).
  • You can narrow results with quotes around phrases (if it’s likely the only way the term will appear). Note that putting quotes around “Stuyvesant H.S.” may not give you the same results as “Stuyvesant High School” (So experiment with both.)

    For the UK (and other places where the schools often have long names) consider not using “” around the school name at all. Instead try various searches of how your ex classmates may refer to the school. For example: The Shropshire School for Infants and Wayward Boys and Girls in Nottingham could appear as the “Shropshire school”, or “the Shropshire school for infants”, or “the Shropshire school in Nottingham.”

Examples of Google Searches within Facebook
The goal is to:
1. Find your friends directly, or
2. Find an alumni page of their school where people look for old classmates, or
3. Find postings by their former classmates. Even classmates from nearly the same school year will do. And don’t forget to check out their friends list. Your subject could be listed there, or you could find other classmates with the same surname. (Perhaps one of their siblings or cousins?)

Clickable Search TermWhat It Finds



“stuyvesant high school” site:facebook.com
Gets all references to this school on Facebook. Can do a separate search using “Stuyvesant HS” But for more targeted hits, add the terms in the columns below. To do your own Google search, just click on the ready made search links in the left column. When you see the Google search box, change to your own school, and then add the desired years you want to search for. But always be sure to keep the exact same format.
“stuyvesant high school” alumni OR reunion site:facebook.comSame as above but targets alumni or reunions.
“stuyvesant high school” 1987..1991 site:facebook.comFinds exact references to the school along with any mention of the years 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991.
“stuyvesant high school” “Manhattan”1987..1991 site:facebook.com

Same as above but also mentions a city or locale just in case several schools have the same name.
“stuyvesant high school” “william chen” site:facebook.comTargets all Facebook references to the school and this particular name. This is usually a long shot but sometimes it works.
“stuyvesant high school” “william chen” “wrestling” site:facebook.comAdds another key word like a sport-don’t bother unless too many results from the search above.


Searching For Relatives Who Attended The Same School
For uncommon last names, you can also search the Facebook profiles of their brothers, sisters and cousins who have the same surname: These people may list your old classmate as a friend or can at least put you in touch with them.

Say for example, that you can’t find Graham Firestone at Stuyvesant HS. Then why not broaden your search for his relatives who went to the same school at about the same time? For example, a last name search of all Facebook entries that refer to this school and firestone. e.g. “stuyvesant high school” “firestone” site:facebook.com

This can also be used for common last names where you get lots of hits. Simply refine your search to the approximate time period when your classmate attended. To capture younger and older relatives, make the range slightly more than the 4 years in which most people graduate. See below. “stuyvesant high school” “firestone” 1968..1975 site:facebook.com

Other Blogs on Background Checks

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Contact Info, Landlord Tenant, Reverse Lookups-Finding By Their Contact Info, Roommates, Women

Find Old Roommates, former tenants, Sorority Sisters and Frat Brothers When You Don’t Know Their Last Name

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Ever want to get in touch with an old housemate but have no clue how to reach them? Or what about your frat brother with the weird ethnic name no one could pronounce? Yeah, you remember; the guy who everyone called “The Schmoo!”

There are plenty of excellent reasons to reach out to a former roommate. Perhaps they owe you loads of money. Or maybe you just want to send them wads of their old magazines.

As a recruiter, sales person, or wannabe Ponzi schemer, it’s always good to explore new and sometimes very old connections. Same goes if you’re looking for alumni donations or are in charge of your class reunion!

But whatever your reasons are, I’m here to show you how easy it is to reach out to those who previously shared your home address. And it works even when they have a new surname, you forgot their last name, or you have no clue how to spell it!

Backgrounding All The Places You’ve Lived At

Let’s break this down nice and easy. First, you’ll need to find a free Orwellian website that just happens to list all your prior addresses with links to all or most of the people you once lived with.

From there, simply click on the prior address where you both were housemates, so you can see a list of present and former residents. A good site will have their names in hyperlinks, and provide exciting personal information about them such as their ages, middle initials and new surnames. From there it’s just a game of point and click!

How I Used PeopleSearchNow To Locate My Indian Roommate of 25 Years Ago

I’ll start with one of my favorite free websites. The very best is Cyberbackgroundchecks.com. Second best is PeopleSearchNow.

Note: If you know the person’s name and it’s a rare one, simply look it up directly in the Name search box. Or if you know an old address of theirs, you can enter it here and then when it lists all tenants, you can look for the link to their name. Or you can use the top links in the website to do a reverse search on emails or phone numbers. For a backup site, checkout Search For Free (by name) or Search For Free (by address)

Otherwise, look up your own name so you can find the address you both lived at. Below I’ll show you how I found “Sameer” when I had no clue how to spell or even say his last name! But as you can see, I found not only his last name, but probably also his current cell phone number.

First, type in your own name and hit enter. If your name is a common one, you may want to narrow your search with a city and state. Note that you’ll see a partial list of addresses, sometimes with the top address being old and not your current address.

The goal is to find and click on the address that you and your former roommate lived at. To see more addresses, click View Details.

Still can’t find the address you both shared? Well, then scroll down until you see more addresses. And click “Show More” for even more addresses. Don’t bother clicking on court records or other links-they’ll just wanna charge ya! Now click on the address you both lived at.

Once you’ve clicked on an address, there may be several pages of people who have lived there. So be sure to search all pages until you find them.

Here I found Sameer from my old address at 2422-D Morosgo Ct, Atlanta GA. (There was no way I could spell that surname!)

When I clicked on View Details, I was able to see his cell phone numbers, and places he’s lived at. Note that his current address may be wrong, but who cares? You can always confirm his address through reverse lookups, property records or various other means.

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