It used to be that everyone had a landline phone in their home and locating a phone number or address simply required opening the yellow pages and locating the name. Things have grown more difficult now that cell phones are in common use and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.

Even with the development of caller ID on most home phones, many numbers may show up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their name from showing up. Reverse phone lookup services have stepped up to these changing demands to offer a very useful service to resourceful phone users.

There are two common uses for these directories.

Finding Names

If you are getting calls from someone and only a number comes up on your caller ID, or you want to figure out cell phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can help you find out the name registered to the phone number of concern. Just by typing in the phone number you will have access to the person who is initiating those phone calls in question.

People looking for lookup directories include those wanting to check up on a number frequently 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 Other people may use lookup directories when they want to find a name connected to a home phone that is unpublished. If you have a phone number but don't know who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup directory can deliver the information.

Searching for Addresses

The other typical use is to locate an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you find the contact information linked with a particular number most services will deliver other sorts of data as well, such as the address of the home phone or the address listed to a cell phone number.

This may not be an everyday need for some people, but it does have its benefits in some situations. Such as a parent desperate to find a teenager who has run off or is still out long after curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly tell them addresses and names of locations the teenager may be at that time.

Other circumstances may be searching for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have a phone number you can find their address and mail out the invitation without calling or tracking down other busy parents.

These services can also deliver access to other kinds of information, including income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an estimated pinpoint to the business or home's location.

There will be a small charge for any up to date reverse phone lookup website, but if your business or personal life requires certain data it is money well spent in the end. The charge is required because this variety of information is not easy or free to research, collect, and store, so issuing it immediately to consumers such as you must also include a charge to make up for such serviceable expenditures.

There likely will never be a public directory for cell phone numbers, and even if they were compiled most likely a lot of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many landline numbers today. The best way to gain access to such numbers is to give a small charge either to do a one time phone number search or to join a lookup directory if you will need to access the directory long term.