Why public records searchers shouldn’t rely on search engines alone
In today’s investigative landscape, time is everything. Whether you’re conducting fraud investigations, due diligence reviews, or law enforcement inquiries, delays can mean missed leads, increased risk exposure, and costly oversights. Yet most investigators still rely on tools that were never designed for professional investigative work. Searching to uncover specific information on a single individual among millions of records shouldn’t take hours of manual cross-referencing and data validation.
Whether an investigative team is trying to check out a potential trial witness, confirm an identity, or prepare for a fraud investigation on behalf of a government agency or insurance company, investigators need answers quickly.
Often, however, searchers of public records data come up against a common question: Why wouldn’t I just search the subject’s name online and be done with it?
Powerful, but for a different purpose
Online search engines can be productive when answering a question about a new restaurant, movie, recipe, or travel destination; however, data experts warn that the very strengths that are built into public search engines make them unwieldy, time-consuming, and too often inaccurate for the specialized needs of law enforcement, corporate risk managers, government fraud investigators, and other investigative searchers.
Eric Gerhard, Product Manager at Thomson Reuters, having spent years working in the public records information technology and services industry, recognizes this acute problem.
“If you search online, even for my relatively unique name, you receive 44 million results,” says Gerhard. “Sure, there may be valuable information buried in there about me. The challenge is that there are literally billions of pages of information on the internet, however, and searchers need to be confident that they’ve reached the end of their search. How can you accomplish that if you enter a name in your search, and it returns 1,000 pages of results? By relying solely on online searches, you could keep on clicking deeper and deeper, page after page.”
One of the biggest advantages online search engines do offer for everyday use is that a search for the exact same term can generate different results, based on each separate user’s past search history. That benefit, unfortunately, is also the biggest disadvantage for investigators and other professional data searchers.
When you search online only, you don’t even know what you are missing
Additionally, as far-reaching as search engines may be, there are large swaths of data that they still don’t access and make available to searchers.
Through some data services, searchers can go far beyond what may be shown on the average online search results page. For example, data services can uncover whether an individual operates a marijuana-related business if they possess a license to sell or grow, and if it’s for recreational or medicinal use in nature.
Leveraging more sophisticated search tools
For most investigators, it’s vital to understand where the data comes from. Not only is getting the right connections crucial, but having an auditable trail with trusted sources and source documents is key for most research or investigations. Unlike public search engines, CLEAR is available exclusively to authorized professionals in law enforcement, legal, and corporate risk functions, ensuring responsible, compliant use.
CLEAR® Batch Services is designed to give investigators confidence in both the scope and provenance of their data. CLEAR Batch Services also helps investigators work more efficiently and stay current as data changes. Automated bulk searching eliminates time-consuming manual lookups, while built-in alerts notify teams when new information—such as address changes, asset updates, or adverse records—becomes available.
Investigators need control
When it comes to investigators and other professional searchers, their success depends on that they—not a public search engine—have the power to determine what records and sources a data search reveals to them. And because no algorithm can replace the insights of a professional data searcher or seasoned investigator, it is urgent to pair that expertise with advanced investigative solutions.
These solutions—uniquely designed for that purpose and which can zero in on the results that are most valuable to investigators, quickly and transparently—can make the difference between a successful, focused search that yields key results and falling down an internet rabbit hole of extraneous information.
Streamline your investigations by searching thousands of people or businesses at once with CLEAR® Batch Services. Access aggregated public and proprietary records from multiple sources at scale—helping you uncover connections and support identity verification using available information with confidence.
Disclaimer
Access to these tools is limited to authorized, vetted customers.
Thomson Reuters is not a consumer reporting agency, and none of its services or the data contained therein constitute a ‘consumer report’ as such term is defined in the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. sec. 1681 et seq. The data provided to you may not be used as a factor in consumer debt collection decisioning, establishing a consumer’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, government benefits, or housing, or for any other purpose authorized under the FCRA. By accessing one of our services, you agree not to use the service or data for any purpose authorized under the FCRA or in relation to taking an adverse action relating to a consumer application.
