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There are lots of free sites for finding public records online. When you run a public records search, you can find everything from marriage and divorce records to public birth and death information, criminal records, and more.
Some public records finders will locate all of that information at once, but others are built specifically for one type of record. For example, you might use one website for locating death records and another for birth records, but some public records include both.
Below are the top free ways to find public records depending on the type of information you're after.
These resources only cover publicly available records, meaning that they're only what's been made available online. Some public records aren't released online and must be accessed through your local records office. Sometimes, information you find through these public records resources aren't true or even remotely accurate, so you can't always rely on what you see.
If your public records search is aimed toward finding what's publicly available on a specific person, use a people search engine. You can type a name and location to see more information about the person, like their phone numbers, email addresses, usernames, physical addresses, relatives, education history, and more.
TruePeopleSearch is an example of a free website for finding people online, but others that cost, like BeenVerified, are sometimes more exhaustive.
You can remove your own information from these websites if you wish to.
You might have luck using a people search engine to find criminal records (BeenVerified does a good job at listed those records), but you can also search for criminals with a prison inmate locator such as the one available at Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Family Watchdog is a good public records finder if you're looking for sex offenders in your area. You can search by location or school to find nearby sex offenders, or find a specific criminal via name. You can also use the National Sex Offender Public Website for the most recent information available from all 50 states, The District of Columbia, and U.S. Territories.
Online newspapers are considered public records, too, and they're updated frequently to include recent criminal reports.
Obituaries that are listed online is another way to search public records on the web. It's one of the best ways to learn if someone has passed away.
A similar public records search is for gravesite records. Websites like Find A Grave provide millions of memorials you can search through to confirm a death record, and many even have photos of the gravesite for extra proof.
Most if not all birth certificates aren't public information, but there are ways to search for birth record information online for free through other public records.
For example, a genealogy website often includes birth details such as when and where people were born, who their parents are, whether they were adopted, etc.
Local newspaper sites are another solid way to search public birth records. Not everyone releases a birth announcement, but some people do.
To order your official birth certificate, you can use a service like VitalCheck.
Family trees are online listings of how people are related within a family, so they're a great public record of who's married to whom, whether someone has passed away, how many children someone has, and maybe even where people are currently living.
FamilyTreeNow.com is one example of a free family tree service where you can browse public family trees and search for people by name, birth and death date, and other criteria.
If you still can't find the public records you're searching for, consider using a regular web search engine like Google or Bing. They serve as excellent general search tools that can look across lots of websites at once instead of the specific ones listed above.
However, here are some other resources for finding public records: