There are many reasons why you might want to consider using a site that can do a deep dive search on public records, whether it’s for a background check or anything other matter. Having access to the information that’s otherwise hidden from your view may be able to help you make important decisions about your love life, friendships, and more.

Some of the most popular reasons that people like to search for information online include: finding out more details on their favorite celebrities, researching whether there are any registered sex offenders living in their neighborhood, looking up new friends and other acquaintances to discover more information about them, seeing if there’s any data on their neighbors or other people living nearby, searching to see what former school or university classmates are doing, and many other different reasons for looking.

Background check sites are popular because they are effectively a one-stop-shop for almost every possible piece of public information that is available about a person.

There’s a long list of the types of data that you can obtain through one of the sites. The lengthy list of information that you could possibly get access to via the top public records websites includes, but is not limited to, such data as: a person’s criminal past and any police record, judgments issued by courts against someone, details of a person’s bankruptcies or financial assets they might have.

No. It’s important that you understand that sites offering to perform public records background checks will not provide you data on an individual’s credit score. That’s because the Fair Credit Reporting Act makes it unlawful for public records search sites to obtain and share this data. Because of this prohibition you should never trust a site that says it can provide this information to you, because it cannot by law.

As a result, you can’t use the information you can obtain through public records search websites to check anyone’s creditworthiness. Beware of that limitation before paying for a search, because it’s impossible to use the data that background check websites provide for tasks like screening potential employees, checking the credit rating of a potential tenant, or any other decision tied to someone’s credit score.

No, you cannot, because every major public records search site will charge you a fee. It might be a one-time usage fee or it might be a monthly subscription fee, but either way you will have to pay money to conduct an online background check.

That’s why the team at PublicRecordsCenter has worked so hard to research every possible major public records site available. We believe you should only have to pay a reasonable fee for accessing the information that you need, and the cost of sites is one of the main factors we consider in our exclusive ratings.

You should also be aware that many public records websites will require you to become a member and will then charge you with a cancellation fee if you decide to quit the site. We think it’s important that you know about these charges upfront and that’s why we include details on such fees in our detailed site-specific reviews.

No, you cannot, because every major public records search site will charge you a fee. It might be a one-time usage fee or it might be a monthly subscription fee, but either way you will have to pay money to conduct an online background check.

That’s why the team at PublicRecordsCenter has worked so hard to research every possible major public records site available. We believe you should only have to pay a reasonable fee for accessing the information that you need, and the cost of sites is one of the main factors we consider in our exclusive ratings.

Unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all price for conducting online public records searches, and each company charges different rates. Some will make you pay a very low fee for the search but offset that by imposing high fees for membership to their sites, and a charge if you decide to quit their website and deactivate your membership.

At PublicRecordsCenter, our goal is to save you time and money, and that’s why we give you upfront reviews that clearly tell you when a site charges fees that we think are too high. We believe that you deserve to know all of the potential information about a site’s expenses upfront before you give them any payment details.

Yes. The information that the sites provide you is publicly available and legal for you to access, but the entities that hold this data -- such as local governments -- make it notoriously difficult for the average person to get hold of the information.

That’s why public search sites are so useful, because they take over the hard work of uncovering these details and quickly getting you the data that you want. It also helps to explain why all of these sites charge a fee, because they are saving you a massive amount of money and time by collecting this information for you.

Of course, at PublicRecordsCenter our priority is ensuring you have the best possible experience with background check sites, and that’s why we rate sites based in part on how much they cost people to conduct a public records search.

No. You might be thinking about credit score searches which occur if you go online and try to open a credit card or other line of credit. In those instances a credit agency will be notified and you will get a message telling you that a credit check was made about you. But the same situation does not apply when performing background searches.

Indeed, you can rest assured that when you enter someone’s information into a public records search website, they will never be told that you are looking up data about them. There’s absolutely no way that these sites use to get in touch with the person you are looking for, so you can be satisfied they will never find out about the search.

Additionally, several of the sites rated most highly by our team of online experts at PublicRecordsCenter offer encryption and deletion services.

Encryption services mask your identifying information and make it even harder for a hacker or someone else with malicious intent to find out that you performed a search. These services help to provide public records search site users with added peace of mind that their searches about a person are completely anonymous.

Deletion services also help you to cover your tracks online because they give you the chance to get rid of details of whatever searches you have performed. This can be very useful for those instances where you’ve joined a site for a one-time search and want to delete all traces of that search after you have secured the information you need.

The team at PublicRecordsCenter knows that social media can be an invaluable tool for finding out more information about a person. Sites and applications including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even dating services like Tinder and OKCupid can provide a massive amount of data on someone, including recent pictures of them.

Some public records search sites will not include social media searches, and instead rely solely on more-traditional documents available from official government sources such as court judgments, other legal proceedings, and additional records.

But some of the top-rated sites that we’ve visited and researched do include social media searches, which makes them more attractive to potential users. By adding the potential for searching social media accounts, these sites significantly increase the amount of potential information that they can find out about an individual.

That’s why the team at PublicRecordsCenter considers the inclusion of social media searches among our key criteria when reviewing a public records search site. You can trust that when you read our detailed analyses of such sites, you’ll get complete disclosure about both their benefits and any of their potential drawbacks.