It used to be that everyone had a standard phone in their home and searching for a number or address was a matter of opening the yellow pages and finding the name. This has become more difficult now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have home phones, and if they do their number may be unpublished.

Even with the invention of caller ID on most landlines, many numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to block their details from showing up. Reverse phone lookup services have responded to these changing demands to provide a very valuable service to resourceful phone users.

There are two common functions for these directories.

Finding Names

If you are getting calls from someone and only a number is revealed on your caller ID, or you want to figure out cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can assist in finding the name registered to the phone number of concern. Just by typing in the number you will have access to whoever is behind the calls of concern.

People needing such services include those wanting to identify a number often texting their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Other people may use lookup directories when they need to identify a name registered to a home phone that may be unpublished. If you have a number but don't know who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup website can help.

Searching for Addresses

The other typical use is to identify an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you plug into the contact information linked with a particular number most directories will deliver additional data as well, such as the address of an landline or an address listed to a cell phone number.

This may not be a typical need for most people, but it does have its uses in some situations. Such as a parent needing to track down a teenager who has run away or has not returned home long after curfew. If they can come up with numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a reverse phone lookup could quickly uncover addresses and names of locations the teenager may be at that time.

More common situations may be searching for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have the phone number you can find their address and easily deliver the invite without calling and tracking down other busy family.

Lookup directories can also deliver a connection to other various types of information, including income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an rough pinpoint to the business or home's location.

There is a minor fee for any up to date reverse phone lookup directory, but if your business or personal situation demands particular information it is more than worth the payoff in the end. The fee is unavoidable because this variety of information is not simple or completely free to research, pull together, and store, so issuing it immediately to consumers like you must also collect a fee to account for such serviceable expenditures.

There likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if there were most likely the majority of the numbers would be unlisted just like many landline numbers today. The best way to gain access to these phone numbers is to put up a minor fee either to do a single phone number search or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the directory long term.