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Google: The White Pages Phonebook That Never Gets Misplaced
When we first moved into our home, we noticed that we were getting about five or six phone books every spring. We hauled them in the house and they sat on the lowest shelf of the bookcase. We would rarely use them. Now, we never use a phonebook, thanks to Google!
Google can act as a capable phonebook if you know how to type the right things into the search box.
For example, if you type in Smith, John, LA, California, Google will show you the following results:
Google doesn’t always recognize your query as a phone book search, however. Many times, it is necessary to include the operator rphonebook: at the beginning of your search. You can do many things with this operator. Below is a table summarizing some of the various searches you can perform:
| Format | Example |
| rphonebook: Last Name, ZIP Code | rphonebook: Smith, 83440 |
| rphonebook: Last Name, City, State | rphonebook: Smith, 83440 |
| rphonebook: First Name/Initial, Last Name, City, State | rphonebook: John Smith, Detroit, MI |
| rphonebook: First Name/Initial, Last Name, State | rphonebook: J Smith, Iowa |
| rphonebook: First Name/Initial, Last Name, City | rphonebook: J Smith, Kalamazoo |
| rphonebook: First Name/Initial, Last Name, ZIP Code | rphonebook: John Smith, 48114 |
There are more combinations that can be used, just use your imagination! For example, if I type rphonebook: miller, 15228 into a Google Search box, I get these results:
After typing in rphonebook: query, Google then brings up the Google Phonebook search page and gives you the option of searching again in the Phonebook, or to search the whole World Wide Web.
Drawbacks
Google isn’t a perfect phonebook. A lot of people have found that the data is sometimes over a year old. Also, Google phonebook still has two limitations of any ordinary phonebook:
- It doesn’t contain cellular phone numbers.
- It doesn’t contain unlisted numbers.
Overall, though, Google PhoneBook is very capable of finding many residential numbers.
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