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Help & FAQ

This section includes answers to frequently asked questions about InfoSpace.com. Please select your topic from the menu below, or browse the list for help.

Menu of Topics

Yellow Pages
White Pages
Public Records
Web Search
Maps and Directions
Browse Categories
Reverse Lookup
Near an Address
Email Search
World Directories
Classifieds
Default Locations
Cookies
Browsers
Miscellaneous

Yellow Pages
Q. How do I add or update my business listing?
A. Yellow Pages listings are supplied by Verizon SuperPages.

To add or update your existing free basic Yellow Pages listing, please go to the following website: https://snap.superpages.com/NASApp/Listing/control/ViewListing.

To delete your listing, please call the customer service department at 1-800-428-8722, stay on the line without pushing any prompts, and a representative will assist you.

Your new or updated listing will appear on our site after Verizon updates its data.

Q. Who is the source of your Yellow Pages data?
A. Yellow Pages listings are supplied by Verizon SuperPages.

Q. How often is this data updated?
A. Information for our U.S. and Canadian business data is updated on an ongoing basis, usually once a month.

Q. Is there a way to search for the email address of a company that I find using the Yellow Pages? What about a specific email address within a company?
A. Upon receiving the results of a search for any given company, you may see an email address listed along with the postal address. Each company decides on this entry. We have no listings for individual email addresses within a company. Contact the company directly to locate an internal email address.

White Pages
Q. How can I add my listing to the White Pages?
A. Just go to our Add Your Listing page to add your name, phone number, and email address to our directory. To protect your privacy and ensure the entered information is valid, InfoSpace will send an email message to the address you enter. Once InfoSpace receives a reply from you verifying your submission, your listing will be added to the White Pages and/or email search.

Q. How do I update or delete my listing?
A. It's easy. Just search the White Pages or email search directory to find your listing. Once you have located it, click on your name to go to the listing details page. On this page, simply click the "Update/Remove" link to the right of your name and follow directions on that page. To verify your request, InfoSpace will send an email message to the address you provide. Once you confirm the request, your listing will be updated or deleted.

Q. How long will it take for additions, changes, and deletions to take effect?
A. In most cases, changes take effect within 24 hours of receipt of your verification message. We update our database between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. U.S. Pacific time.

Q. What is the source of the data for the White Pages and email directories?
A. Data for the White Pages is supplied by Acxiom. Acxiom gets its information from phone books and other public records. Data in our email directory comes from various Internet service providers and from user submissions.

Q. How often is the White Pages data updated?
A. InfoSpace receives updates to its U.S. residential data (excluding any additions or changes by users) monthly from Acxiom. Because Acxiom's listings come from regional phone books, and because new editions appear at different times of the year around the country, data may be more recent for some regions than others.

Q. I have an unlisted telephone number. Why does my information show up in the White Pages?
A. This can be easily resolved. It's possible that your local telephone company has made an error and listed your number. Another possibility is that your number was listed in the past and remains in the database. If you wish to remove your listing, please search for it and click the "remove" link that appears next to your name.

Q. How come I can't find people who I know have had the same telephone number for a year or more?
A. This generally means one of three things: the person has an unlisted telephone number, the person has specifically requested that the number be removed from our directory, or our data provider has not yet added the number to its database.

Public Records
Q. What types of records are available?
A. Currently we offer name and address records, phone records, marriage records, divorce records, death records, real property records, and DEA registrants. Refer to the coverage area information to determine if the database covers the geographical area you're searching. At some time in the future we may offer criminal and other public records.

Q. What criteria should I use when searching?
A. Our database contains over 10 billion records from a wide variety of public record databases. The different search criteria includes:

Name
City, State

We encourage our members to experiment by running multiple searches with different name spellings. The records in our database come from many different public record databases and an individual's name may be spelled differently in different databases.

Q. Where do the records come from?
A. Our records are compiled from many public record sources including but not limited to: Government databases, white pages information, real property records, death records, magazine subscriptions and voter registration. Record collection for some databases began in the early 1980's so the databases contain many historical records.

Q. What is a Premium Report?
A. A Premium Report is a single comprehensive report that can be run on virtually any individual found in our database. When you run a name search, click on one of the returned names to get the details for that person (if available) and select the Premium Report option button. A Premium Report searches over 10 billion records and automatically cross references the results to return a single comprehensive report. View Sample Report for a Premium Report.

Q. I looked up a name and the address was out of date. How come?
A. Our database contains over 10 billion records. When you consider there are approximately 260 million people in the United States, this means there are 8 records for every person. This is because records are never deleted from our database and are continually added. Every time an individual moves and a new address is reported, the new address is added to the database and the old address remains in the database as well. Our database has records dating back to the early 1980's, which equates to a 15-year address history for some individuals. When you receive your results, you may receive more than one historical record for your individual.

Q. I want to locate an old friend. Will you search for me?
A. Our site is the most powerful, automated, self-service, public record retrieval system on the Web. Our system is self-serve and we don't currently have support staff that will run searches for you.

Q. How do I search by Social Security Number?
A. Social security numbers are considered 'personal identifiers' and are not contained in our database results or query screens.

Q. I found my search subject and want to contact them.
A. Our service is great tool for locating lost friends and classmates but does not give our users the ability to directly contact individuals contained in the database. If you would like to contact an individual found in the database, we suggest using regular mail or the phone number if it was listed.

Q. I am looking for an e-mail address for a person. Do you list e-mail addresses?
A. Our database does not currently contain e-mail addresses. Many Internet users use one of the many free Internet mail services that do not require a person to give an accurate name or address when signing up. This makes it almost impossible to establish connections between e-mail users and our databases.

Q. Can I do international searches?
A. Unfortunately, we do not offer the ability to search for international people or information. The InfoSpace services are provided to locate US based information at this time.

Q. What if I forgot my password?
A. To retrieve your password, just follow these steps:

Click here to go to the password retrieval page.
Enter your user name & your password will be emailed to the address on file.

Q. How do I change my password?
A. Once you are a registered user, you may change your password at any time. You must be logged in to change your password.

Click here to change your password.
Enter in the new password in the password and confirm password fields.
Click the Submit button to apply the changes.

Web Search
Q. What is metasearch?
A. The short answer is that metasearch searches several search engines at one time allowing better coverage of the Web, and therefore providing better overall results to the user.

Q. Which search engines does InfoSpace metasearch use?
A. InfoSpace returns results from these leading engines: Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, About, Looksmart, Overture, Teoma and FindWhat.

Q. How can I get listed in InfoSpace's search results?
A. When you submit your Web address(es) to InfoSpace.com, we add your address to the search index of MetaCrawler, WebCrawler, Dogpile and many more leading search sites -- guaranteed. This way, when our millions of users search by selecting relevant keywords relating to the products and services you sell, your business is one of the Web sites they will find on our search results pages.

Find out more about getting your site listed on InfoSpace.com.

Maps and Directions
Q. Who provides the maps and directions?
A. Maps and directions are provided by MapQuest.com, and we are unable to make changes. Please contact MapQuest.com directly to resolve data change requests. Click here for terms and conditions.

Q. Why do the door-to-door directions results say my address cannot be found?
A. The address syntax may not be recognized by the system. Try writing "Street" instead of "St." For the U.S. Postal Service's list of standard postal terms and abbreviations, click here.

Q. I found an error on the map that I got from your site. How can I submit a correction?
A. Maps and directions are provided by MapQuest.com, and we are unable to make changes. Please contact MapQuest.com directly to resolve data change requests. Click here for the specific terms and conditions.

Q. How come I can only get directions to cities in the U.S. and Canada?
A. Although we're always looking to add new cities outside the U.S. and Canada, at this time we only have access to this content.

Browse Categories
Q. What is Browse Categories?
A. Sometimes you know broadly what you're looking for, but not enough specifics to have a successful search on the regular Yellow Pages search box. This feature allows you to browse through listings by category, as you would in a paper phone book, to help you refine your search.

Q. Where do the Browse Categories listings come from?
A. The Browse Categories feature uses the same data as our Yellow Pages search with all information being supplied by Verizon SuperPages.

Reverse Lookup
Q. What is Reverse Lookup?
A. Reverse Lookup allows you to enter a phone number or address and find the listing information for that entry.

Q. I tried a reverse lookup, but no information is being returned, how come?
A. Although our directory content is extensive, not all phone numbers are included. This is especially true for wireless phone numbers.

Q. Are reverse lookup searches available in the InfoSpace directories?
A. Yes, reverse lookups are available on phone numbers (U.S. and Canada), residential addresses (U.S. and Canada), area codes (U.S., Canada, Caribbean), and email addresses (worldwide).

Q. I'm having trouble finding a listing using Reverse Lookup. Do you have any tips?
A. Reverse Lookup doesn't always work, but there here are a few things you could try if you're not getting any results:

If you don't know the house number, leave it blank.
Try dropping the street type (like Street, Road, Ave., etc.)
Try dropping the direction of the street (like West, N.E., etc.)

Q. Are reverse lookups available internationally?
A. We offer reverse lookups for Canada phone numbers and residential addresses. Reverse lookups are also available on all email addresses in our database, regardless of country.

Near An Address
Q. How do I use the Near An Address feature?
A. The Near An Address feature allows you to find businesses that are within a certain distance of the location you choose. You could use it to find a restaurant near your home, office or vacation spot. Locations are displayed with the closest business listed first, and so on.

To use Near Address:

Click the Near An Address link.
Choose to search by Business Type or Name.
Enter the location you would like to search from.
Select the maximum distance from your search location.
Click the Search button.
Choose the results category that you would like to view.

Q. I'm having trouble with the Near An Address feature. Do you have any tips that might help?
A. Sure. Here are some tips to help you with the Near An Address feature:

If you enter a street address, the distance will be measured from that exact location.
If you enter just a city and state, or just a state and ZIP Code, the distance will be measured from the geographical center of the city or ZIP Code area, respectively.
As a rule of thumb, use the same city name that you would use if you were addressing a letter.
Do not use abbreviations in the Street or City fields. Enter a street address such as 12 S. Maple St. as 12 South Maple Street.
Enter the full state name or the 2-letter U.S. Postal Service state code in the State field. For example California or CA.
In the ZIP field, enter a 5-digit ZIP Code; ZIP+4 codes are not accepted.
In order to speed up your search, you should still enter a state in the State field, even when using a ZIP Code.

Email Search
Q. What is the source for your Email data?
A. Data in our email directory comes from various Internet service providers and from user submissions.

Q. Why can't I find the email addresses I'm looking for?
A. There is no central registry of Internet email addresses. We obtain our list of email addresses from many different sources, and, although our database is extensive, it is not all encompassing. Many people prefer to not have their email address listed, and some Internet service providers do not make the email addresses of their subscribers available.

World Directories
Q. How do I search the World Directories?
A. Click the World Directories link from the main White Pages directory. Select the region you would like to search in. Then, select the country and directory you would like to use.

Q. What is the source of the data for World Directories?
A. We collect the best sources of directory information for regions across the world and provide you with links to all these international resources in one place.

Default Locations
Q. How do I change my default location?
A. To change your default location, click the Change default link at the bottom of the main page. Then, from the My Locations page, you can either set an existing location to your default, or Add a New Location in the fields provided and make it your default.

Q. How do I add another location to my profile?
A. To add another location to your profile, click the Add another location link at the bottom of the main page. Then, under the Add a New Location header, enter the location name, address, city, state and ZIP, and click Save.

Classifieds
Q. Who provides the data for the classifieds?
A. The classifieds data comes from many different sources. Please email info@infospace.com for details.

Q. Can I add my own listing to the classifieds?
A. At this time we do not have a way to update listings. Please contact the company that provides the classifieds you are interested in for more information.

Q. I found someone that I want to contact in the Personals section, but I can't get a message through to their email address.
A. Since we have several agencies that supply personals for us, you will need to refer to the individual agency for more information about alternate contact methods.

Q. How can I submit a Personals ad?
A. All of the personals that are available on our site are maintained by our partners. Please contact the partner by following the directions on the site.

Cookies
Q. What does the word "cookie" mean in Internet terminology?
A. A cookie is a small file that stores information about your personal preferences, either on your computer (client-side cookie) or on the website you're visiting (server-side cookie).

Q. Does InfoSpace use server-side cookies or client-side cookies?
A. We store information on your application preferences (such as default location) in a client-side cookie. We do not store any of the data on the server side.

Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about the importance we place on your privacy.

Browsers
Q. Which browser program should I use to view the InfoSpace directories?
A. InfoSpace works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer (versions 5.0 and later) or Netscape Navigator (versions 6.2 and later).

Q. How do I make InfoSpace.com my home page?
A. Making InfoSpace.com your default home page is easy, just click the Make Your Homepage link from the InfoSpace.com main page, or follow the appropriate path below:

	If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher:
	Go to http://www.infospace.com/ Select Tools from your browser menu. Select Internet Options. Click Use Current button located in the top Home page section. Click OK.
	If you're using Netscape Navigator or Communicator:
	Go to http://www.infospace.com/ Select Edit from your browser menu. Select Preferences. Click Use Current Page button (or enter the address in the field under Home page.) Click OK.

Q. How do I bookmark InfoSpace.com?
A. To bookmark InfoSpace.com, just click the Bookmark This Page link from the InfoSpace.com main page, or follow the instructions below:

	If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher:
	Select the Favorites menu from your main browser window. Select Add to Favorites. Click OK.
	If you're using Netscape Navigator or Communicator:
	Select Bookmarks from your main browser window. Select Bookmark This Page.

Miscellaneous
Q. How can I advertise on the InfoSpace network?
A. For advertising information, please visit our Advertise with InfoSpace page.

Q. Can you tell me a little bit more about InfoSpace?
A. InfoSpace delivers wireless and Internet software and application services to the leading wireless and broadband providers, Web sites and merchant resellers around the world. Our partners, in turn, offer these solutions to their customers as their own - accessible from virtually any device, anytime, anywhere. For more information visit http://www.infospaceinc.com.