As you may already know, public records are official government records that record various key details of your life. For example, information about a person's birth, death, marriage (or marriages), divorce (or divorces) and many other things are collectively public records. Here's what you need to know if you want to search public record databases in a practical, efficient way.

Public records are stored in various forms at various government offices around the country. Until recently, if you wanted to search these records, you needed to go to the courthouse or government office that was most likely to have the information you need, then start digging through the files by hand. This limited public record searches to only the most important situations, as the cost and time required to do the work was considerable.

The Internet has changed all that. Some clever entrepreneurs came up with the idea of making public records available to anyone willing to pay a fee and enter some simple information into a web site. The process is simple to explain, but difficult and time consuming to do. A public records search site will buy access to as many public records as they can, from as many sources as possible. Everything from birth records to marriage records, to police records, and virtually any other records available to the public get acquired.

This huge amount of information is then combined into a massive central database. Since the database includes a huge number of sources of public information, it can be much more accurate and complete than any individual state or local database. You can search that database simply by entering the information you have about a person and telling it what kind of records you want. You'll have to pay a small fee to see the results, but the web site I recommend shows you what kind of information they have on the person you entered before charging you anything. It's a great way to determine if you're going to find useful information before you actually spend a penny.