Google Hacks

Consulting the Phonebook

Google makes an excellent phonebook, even to the extent of doing reverse lookups.

Google combines residential and business phone number information and its own excellent interface to offer a phonebook lookup that provides listings for businesses and residences in the United States. However, the search offers three different syntaxes, different levels of information provide different results, the syntaxes are finicky, and Google doesn’t provide any documentation.

The Three Syntaxes

Google offers three ways to search its phonebook:

phonebook

Searches the entire Google phonebook

rphonebook

Searches residential listings only

bphonebook

Searches business listings only

Tip

The result page for phonebook: lookups lists only five results, residential and business combined. The more specific rphonebook: and bphonebook: searches provide up to 30 results per page. For more chance of finding what you’re looking for, use the appropriate targetted lookup.

Using the Syntaxes

Using a standard phonebook requires knowing quite a bit of information about what you’re looking for: first name, last name, city, and state. Google’s phonebook requires no more than last name and state to get it started. Casting a wide net for all the Smiths in California is as simple as:

phonebook:smith ca

Try giving 411 a whirl with that request! Figure 1-11 shows the results of the query.

Figure 1-11. phonebook: ...