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Knee-deep in the search engine sludge, it can be quite a chore to dig up any information about the person you’re looking for. Hours of sifting through pages of muddled strangers with the same name but from a different country or the wrong school can be a daunting task, as Michael Hussey (not the famous Australian cricket player, thank you Google) experienced years ago. Hussey’s frustration led him to build PeekYou in April 2006, a website through which people-seekers can find the individual they’re searching for and track down any of the places where that person has left his/her mark around the web.

Michael working on the first of his rating sites, RateMyFace, in the summer of 1999.

More like a virtual white pages for the internet than a typical search engine, PeekYou scours the vast reaches of the web for information about an individual, then consolidates that information into one neatly compacted and easy-to-navigate package. A PeekYou profile makes it effortless for people to find the links to all of your social networking profiles, personal websites, blogs, news articles—you name it—by putting it all in one place. Users can find who they’re looking for by using any number of descriptive characteristics, starting with first and last name, known aliases, location, and keywords. Results can be further refined to the point of distinguishing between two John Smiths from the same town, who attended the same high school at the same time– this can be done by noting an interest in skydiving or the other’s current employer in the search inquiry. Not only is the breadth of information remarkable, but the tags and links are conveniently organized into helpful subcategories that make surfing a breeze.

PeekYou

One primary goal of Michael’s is to make it easier for people to monitor their own identity on the web. PeekYou is an index of the information that is already publicly available online, compiled from social networking sites, new coverage, blogs, and more; Michael brings it all together so a user can see his/her online footprint. Profiles are largely user-generated and anyone who becomes a registered user can add a new profile or edit existing results. Whether you’re tempted to see what your friend is up to or want to sneak a peek at yourself, PeekYou does the searching for you, so all that’s left for you to do is point and click.

Meet Michael Hussey in an exclusive one-on-one interview that features Michael’s thought process behind creating PeekYou and his previous experience in building RateMyTeachers, RateMyFace , RateMyProfessors (which sold to MTV), and other rating sites: Michael Hussey and IntimateMath