Phone Numbers Search Engines

Most online phone directories are primarily derived from infoUSA (formerly known as American Business Information Inc.) databases. More recently, some are use data from Acxiom. A few have data from the phone companies. Search features vary greatly even when source databases are the same. Underlying data sources can change, so look closely at the fine print at the bottom of the search results.

Search Engine	Search Options	Data Source
Yahoo! Yellow Pages and White pages	must choose a location first	check yellow Acxiom (as of 12/05)
Directory Assistance Plus	name or category, one state at a time	infoUSA (as of 12/05)
Switchboard	multiple state searching in name search	Acxiom (as of 12/05)
Superpages	reverse lookup; nationwide search	Acxiom
WorldPages.com	U.S. & Canada, state needed for businesses but not people	Acxiom
InfoSpace	reverse lookup; area code needed	infoUSA verify, Acxiom (white pages as of 12/05)
At Hand	varies; state required; yellow pages only	Phone company records, sometimes
QwestDex	regional but covers whole country	Phone company records, some yellow pages from infoUSA

For non-United States phone number search engines, see the listings at Teldir.

See also my article "Duplicative Databases: Yellow Pages from infoUSA." Database. 22(1): 73-76, Feb.-Mar. 1999, for a more detailed discussion of the underlying databases.