Wieowie.nl, the people search engine

Wieowie.nl, the people search engine

This article also appeared on SearchCowboys.

is a Dutch website which helps you look for people. Well - for the info about people available online. As you enter the name of the person in the search box at the website and click 'Search', Wieowie starts looking through social networks, search engines, photos, videos and personal info available throughout the web.

If you haven't done so by now, you should go to Wieowie.nl and run a search on your name - you might be surprised by some of the results! (For those outside of the Netherlands, the international version of Wieowie formerly known as Whoozy is available at www.kgbpeople.com). Here's what I got when I looked for myself.

Sadly enough, Wieowie didn't find a lot of info about me (even my Facebook profile, which is one of the first results on Google when you search for my name, didn't show up until I used it to log in to Wieowie.nl). My accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube which I frequently use weren't found either.

On the other hand, Wieowie found lots of my articles on SearchCowboys, 857 photos (though only 2 were of me), and one related person (!).

Wieowie is not the only place to look for a person, of course. For example, a few months ago Russian search engine Yandex launched a people finder feature which displays various social media profiles of the person you are looking for. Though despite all my efforts Yandex found only two of my numerous profiles on social networks and blogs.

For a quick comparison, consider looking for yourself on Google. In my case it shows more relevant results than other sources: for example, it finds the social media profiles missed by Wieowie and Yandex. So, to me it seems that googling is still the easiest way of looking for someone. Do you have your own preference when searching for a person? Tell us what you think - and have fun looking for Wally! 

• Door Tamara Yadvichuk
• Gepost op 1 Jun, 2012