I just signed up for RocketReach and was sorely disappointed. The free version allows you to search for business emails, and it gives you all sorts of nifty ways to find people.

So what’s the catch?

The catch is that yes, you can get their business email address, but only if you can find their name within the first two pages of your search. And for reasons most mysterious, this doesn’t happen much, if at all.

Now maybe I was just too dumb to figure it all out. Or maybe, just maybe, RocketReach was hoping to make it complicated so I’d sign up for their premium services.

I tried about 6 searches, but the first two pages gave me irrelevant names, often without the last name of the person I was looking for! And when I tried to search the third page, I was led to spine-chilling messages about RocketReach pricing.

Yep. It seems that if you want to routinely find people through their “free” service, you’re out of luck unless you pay them. And who but Arab oil sheiks can afford these prices?

This is slick marketing on their part. During the sign up, they coax you to divulge your business email address for free. It’s then added or updated in their premium database which they then turn around and charge you $49 a month for! WOW. It would seem then that signing up for their free tool is just a waste of time.

The good news is that it ain’t so! Turns out that Google does a far better job of searching Rocketreach than Rocketreach does! But for this to work, you still have to use their free signup just like I did. Don’t worry, it’s not painful. And you can always give them one of your crappy email addresses, or set up a disposable one for them to send their confirmation to.

After my free signup, I was able to Google for emails within the RocketReach website like this: Graham Firestone solvay site:rocketreach.co

Simply click on the link above, and replace my name with your subject’s, along with the company they work for. Be sure to leave the rest alone. You could also try with quotes like this “Graham Firestone” solvay site:rocketreach.co

This pulled up my name and my company name. To find both my business and personal email address, simply click on VIEW GRAHAM’S CONTACT INFO. Be sure to click further if it says there are other emails.

In my case, it gave out a lot of good information. It pulled up my current business email, and an email from a law firm I used to work for, and a rarely used personal email of mine (scraped from LinkedIn no doubt).

What If My Subject’s Name Doesn’t Appear But I know He Works There?
Don’t be a crybaby. No database is perfect. If the person isn’t listed, do the same Google search above but without the person’s name. This should pull up lots of other people from the same company and allow you to guess the email format.

What if I Don’t Know the Name of Their Employer or Company?
This won’t work well for common names, but with a rare name like mine, try a search like this: “Graham Firestone” site:rocketreach.co.

Note: It’s a lot easier to search for people, places or things if you get Google to display 100 searches at once instead of 10. For an easy way to do this, see Google search 100 hits per page instead of 10 per page.

For more see Cell Phone #s, Emails & Physical Addresses

The End