17 Reliable Ways To Find and Verify Someone's Email Address

Finding someone’s email is the kind of job that’s always extremely boring and takes too much time.

You can always hire someone at UpWork to do this job for you, but what if you’re a bootstrapping company or simply a blogger who doesn’t have enough money to invest in this?

These are the reasons why I’d like to answer some of the most asked questions.

• How to find someone’s email?
• How to verify someone’s email?
• How to find an email address by name?
• How to guess an email address?
• Some of the tools from this blog post are free and some are paid.

Please keep in mind that I’m not affiliated with any of the listed tools. I’ve picked them strictly because I think they deserve to be on the list.

I recently wrote a blog post about content marketing quotes, where I had to collect many emails. I’ll try to find email addresses from people who’re on that list as a case study.

#1 Check the website

The first step is checking the website of the targeted person. Why would you use different tools when you can find the email address within a few seconds, on the website?

No reasonable answer to that. Let’s see how we can find the email address of Josh Steimle, a digital marketing expert. I searched for Josh Steimle on Google and got this as the first two results.

Next, I’ll take a look at the Contact page in the menu. Sometimes, the contact page link can be in a footer.

All the contact information are there.

Nice. Now I can add the email to the Google Sheet:

OK, this was easy. Let’s see what to do if there is no contact page or email address.

#2 Search with EmailHunter

EmailHunter works on the same principle as Google. They’re one big crawler that goes from page to page and crawls the entire web. The difference is they don’t index title, content, or images.

Instead, they index emails. For example, I’ll type evolvor.com, which is the domain of Eric Hebert, web strategist at Evolvor Media.

Once I type the desired domain and press enter, I’ll see the list of email addresses from evolvor.com, that Email Hunter has found while indexing the web. Here they are.

Notice that I can see sources of these addresses. For example, if I click on 8 sources, I can see where does data come from.

Have you spotted the green circle next to the email address?

It’s a confidence score which can also be helpful.

#3 Export From LinkedIn

The biggest professional social network - LinkedIn, can be a goldmine of emails and opportunities. 40% of the United States population is registered on Linkedin.

You can find email addresses in two ways:

• Having a connection with the desired person
• Finding an email from non-connections

I’ll show you both. Firstly, in the menu go to My Network - Connections.

The image below is exactly what you’ll see. It’s the list of potential clients, but also the list of current connections which celebrate a birthday, work anniversary, or some other event (anniversary).

In the right part of the screen, you’ll see the icon which redirects you to the EMAIL, CONTACTS & CALENDAR page. In the right part of the page, click on Export Linkedin Connections.

Now, you have a few options to export to:

• Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file)
• Outlook Express (.CSV file)
• Yahoo! Mail (.CSV file)
• Mac OS X Address Book (.VCF file)
• vCard (.VCF file)

I’ll leave the default option - CSV file.

Next, when I click on Export, I’ll get the list of the connections. If import it into Google Sheet I can see the following data.

I’ve deleted several columns (Title, Middle Name, Suffix, E-mail address 2 and 3, Business street 1, 2, and 3, and a few others).

As you can see, there is a column with email addresses of my connection.

Another way of finding someone’s email address is checking the Linkedin profile. Many professionals give bits of advice for contacting. One of them is John Rampton.

You can always install EmailHunter extension for Chrome. Once you do that, you’ll see the additional, Email Hunter, button.

What’s more, you can search Linkedin profiles with specific skills, country, company and other filtering data, and use them to find new emails.

Not bad at all.

#4 Advanced Google Search

Sometimes you simply can’t manually find someone’s email address. That’s when you should call your old friend - Google. Open Google and in the down right corner, click on Settings - Advanced  search.

Now, you can see a couple of text inputs and drop-down lists which lets you:

• Find pages with the exact word or phrase.
• Exclude pages that contain a specific word or phrase.
• Find pages containing one or more words

Furthermore, you can narrow results to a specific language, region, last update, site or domain, and a few other possibilities.

Specifically, I chose to find “@neilpatel.com” within “quicksprout.com” - I know it’s possible that Neil Patel mentioned his neilpatel.com on quicksprout.com. Here’s the email.

Of course, you can do this search with the following query.

The result will be the same. I just wanted to show you Advanced Search possibilities.

#5 WHOIS record

When you register a new domain, you always need to provide information such as:

• Name
• Organization
• Street
• City
• Country
• Phone
• Email

This information is public and available for everyone unless you buy domain privacy, but for most businesses, that’s not the case. It’s a sign of being a spammer and it might hurt your Google rankings.

I use Domain Tools, so let’s see how to it’s possible to find an email address there. I’ll type jeffbullas.com because I want to find Jeff’s email address.

Here are the results from WHOIS record.

As you can see, I was able to find Jeff’s email within a few seconds.

#6 Twitter

Twitter Advanced Search is similar to Google’s. The difference is that you search for tweets, while on Google you search the web.

For instance, you can check if some tweets contain @jellymetrics.com.

Maybe someone asked about my email address in my tweets? In the case of jellymetrics.com you won’t find an email address on Twitter, but for many influencers, you could.

Let’s see how.

In The exact phrase, I’ll type @wordstream.com and click on Search.

 

Here are the results.

It took me three seconds to find Larry Kim’s email. Amazing, isn’t it?

Furthermore, I can search for at wordpress com and see if there’re other results.

As you might notice, these results are even more accurate, and I’m able to realize the pattern of WordStream email accounts: {First letter of the name}{Last name}@wordstream.com

Eventually, I can search for tweets from the specific Twitter account.

For example, I can search for Larry Kim’s tweets only.

And get the result.

#7 Snap Bird

As you might expect, Snap Bird is the app that uses Twitter API and lets you search:

• Someone’s timeline
• Someone’s favorites
• Your friends’ tweets
• Tweet mentioning you
• Your sent direct messages
• Your received direct messages

How can you search for someone’s favorites or tweets mentioning you? You can’t. It’s not possible to search in Twitter Advanced Search.

Now, let’s see how to search Rand Fishkin’s timeline and find his email. I’ll set up to search:

• Someone’s timeline
• Who
• For

After that, just click on FIND IT! and wait until you see the results. In this case, it took me three seconds to find Rand’s email.

That’s it.

However, how fast you’ll find someone’s email depends on the total number of tweets and if there’s an email at all.

Snap Bird doesn’t search the whole timeline. It searches it in sets, so basically, sometimes you’ll need to have on Search more tweets.

#8 Google+

Google+ is the social network that can’t outrank Facebook, but it’s a place where you can find many professionals and their emails.

Dennis Yu is the CTO at BlitzMetrics, who I contacted recently, so I’ll like to show you how to find Dennis’ email using Google+.

In the search box, just enter Dennis Yu and click on the first result to check if it’s the person we’re looking for.

In this case, I think it is the right person, but let’s be 100% sure. I need to click on ABOUT and learn more about this person.

Now, you’ll see a big modal dialog where you can see information like Education, Experience, Location, etc.

Specifically, I’m looking for the Contact box which gives me contact information.

There was no other additional information like is the person whose profile I’m looking for employed, but it doesn’t matter.

I’m pretty sure the email is accurate because there's only a small number of people with fake profiles. Those are heavyweights like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and others.

#9 Facebook

Facebook is the most used social network in the world.

You might be thinking that Facebook isn’t good for B2B like Linkedin for example. That might be true, but you can still use it to find influencers’ email addresses.

Here is the example. I want to find Ted Rubin’s email, so I’ll simply type Ted Rubin into the search box and click on his profile.

After that, just click on About tab and you’ll see page details.

As you can guess there’s the email.

Notice how some influencers use Gmail addresses? That kind of email address you can’t find using tools like Email Hunter. The process of finding Jeff Bullas’ email address through Facebook will be the same. Simply, open the page, go to the About section and scroll down a bit.

Jeff doesn’t use Gmail account so it would be easy to find this email address using different tools for searching email addresses.

Also, remember how I previously found Jeff’s with WHOIS record?

#10 Voila Norbert

In this app, you simply enter person’s and domain name and you’ll get the email address in return.

Now, I’ll open the app, type Chandar Pattabhiram, who is, by the way, Marketo’s CMO, and click on Go Ahead, Norbert!

Here’s the result.

Sometimes, you’ll see how some emails are 100% for sure.  and sometimes you’ll see that email seems good.  

As you might notice, Chandar Pattabhiram from Marketo isn’t the only one who is on the list. Here is how I’ve added some of them.

Firstly, I’ve installed Norbert’s Chrome Extension.

After that, I just opened Neil Patel’s LinkedIn profile, and as you can see, there is a new button - Norbert?

Next, click on it and wait until you see it has been added.  That’s the way Neil has been added.

However, you need to be careful because what happens if there is someone with the same name in one company?

That happened to me when I was looking for Andrew Chen, who works as a Growth Expert at Uber.

This is what I got from this app.

As you can see, the guy at the photo above and the photo below are not the same person.

It’s because Norbert gave the address of Andrew Cesarz who works as a Senior Recruiter at Uber.

To sum up, the app is great but you need to be careful. You don’t want to send an email to someone who works as a recruiter. Instead, you want a growth team member.

#11 Rapportive

Just as they say, Rapportive shows you everything about contacts right inside your inbox.

If you’re wondering where does data come from, let me tell you that this app (extension) is built on LinkedIn.

Now, you might be thinking that Rapportive is exclusively for getting information about your contacts. Basically, it is, but wait until you see this hack.

Firstly, I need to guess emails from someone. For that purpose, I’ll use this Google Sheet Email Permutator made by Rob from Distilled.

There is almost every permutation.

It works very simply, but before I create different variations from my requirement, I need to make a copy of this document.

Now, go to File - Make a copy...

Next, name a copy as Email Permutator or whatever you wish.

Now, I’ll enter the next values:

• B2 cell: michele
• B4 cell: linn
• B5 cell: contentinstitute.com

Here’s how it looks:

Great! Now I have the full list of possible emails - there are exactly 46 emails. Here are the most common (my guess) patterns of corporate emails:

• {First name}@domain.com
• {Last name}@domain.com
• {First name}.{Last name}@domain.com

Specifically, here’s the short list of possible emails.

Finally, copy all these emails to the clipboard, go back to the Gmail and click on COMPOSE.

Into the To input field simply paste all permutations, and on right side, you’ll see a Rapportive sidebar.

It’s 100% sure there is no registered Linkedin account with this specific domain.

On the other side, if I click on the second email (pattern {Last name}@example.com), I’ll see there is no Linkedin account associated with that email.

But, if I click on the first email, here’s what I can see.

Voilà! There’s an email account associated with the first pattern ({First name}@domain.com), but I won’t write it here due to spam reasons (you can always see the first email into input, by the way).

To sum up, using this simple hack you can convert the Rapportive Chrome extension into an email scanner.

Surely, it might be possible that someone uses another email for his LinkedIn account, but you have to accept that.

You can always add your connection on LinkedIn and export it as I’ve already mentioned.

#12 Guesser.email

If you don’t like Email Permutator, you can always use guesser.email which does the almost identical job.

The difference is that there is no middle name, but I don’t think there are many people with the active used middle name, or I’m wrong?

So, I’ll enter a first name, last name, and domain.

Specifically, I’ll enter nedim, talovic, and jellymetrics.com The tool created by Stuart McCroden just gave me 28 guesses.

Here are they.

Here’s my email.

I’m pretty sure that most of the email addresses can be successfully guessed.

#13 EmailGuesser.com

If you don’t like UI and UX from these two previous tools (Google Sheet document and email.guesser), you can always use EmailGuesser.com It works the same way. Simply, enter first name, last name, and email network (domain).

Expecting, I just entered my data and clicked on Get Email Combinations.

Here are they.

It doesn’t get any simpler? Now let’s see how to verify an email address because using Rapportive Chrome Extension isn’t the only way.

I’ll open Email Checker, and simply enter my own Jellymetrics email into the input field.

Since this email is correct, I just got a Valid message within two seconds.

However, the purpose of this isn’t to verify your email, so I’ll simply enter [email protected] to see what will happen. 

Simply, I know if the email is valid.

Furthermore, they’re offering Bulk Email Checker which is a commercial version of the tool, where you can speed up the process.

#14 emailhippo

emailhippo is another simple tool where you can verify someone’s email address.

The tools works on the same principle just as the previous one. You just need to enter someone’s email address and results are there.

Again, I’ll type my email to prove you that this service works.

After I click on Check.. and wait for a few seconds, I can see a green check box that tells me that the email address is valid.

It’s possible to do 20 daily email verifications for free. If you want more than that, choose a plan that fits your needs.

On the other side, if I write some email that doesn’t exist I’ll be notified.

Having a lot of emails actually, mean that you need an API or Bulk validation.

If that’s the case, emailhippo offers you API which isn’t expensive because once you get verified emails, you’ll make some money.

#15 Verify-Email.org

Verify Email is the tool with simple UX and UI where you enter someone’s email and get the response within a second.

Now, I’ll type the email of my co-founder to check if the email exists.

The result came in a second.

Specifically, the connection succeeds to Zoho’s server because we use their mail server, but the problem is that the user is unknown.

That’s not my co-founder’s email. Our email pattern is [email protected].

When I enter that into the input field, verification will definitely be successful.

Again, it took one second to verify,

and results are there.

Depending on your needs, you can always buy a plan that suits you.

I suggest you compare prices and then make your choice. For instance, verify-email.org is a bit cheaper than emailhippo.

#16 EmailHunter Verifier

While I was searching for tools that I can include in this article, I’ve found that EmailHunter published a tool for verifying email account.

There are dozens of verification this tool does.

• Valid format. Your email format needs to be valid, obviously.
• Gibberish email address. This checks if you send a random email address which is not logical.
• Disposable email address. They check if the email address has a domain name used for temporary email addresses.
• Webmail email addresses. They verify if the email address uses a webmail like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo.
• Presence of MX Records. MX records are required for receiving emails. No MX record no valid email account.
• Presence of SMTP Server. This check is successful if they’re able to connect to the SMTP server. SMTP check. They check if the email address will bounce or not.
• Accept-all Domain. They check if the server has a catch-all policy which accepts all the email addresses.

Now, I’ll type marketing (plus jellymetrics.com) to check if that email address exists.

The truth is - it doesn’t exist.

It's all correct.

#17 VerifyEmailAddress.org

Although this tool doesn’t offer anything new, I still want to share it. It’s good to know that all these tools have limited access, so you can use all of them to make some savings.

Anyway, let me show you how to verify the email address. As expected, open the tool and enter the desired email address.

After that, you’ll see what they feel - if the email address is valid or not.

The next step is to click on Show details, if you’re interested in them.

Here’s what you can get.

Specifically, you see everything mentioned earlier.

Firstly, they check if MX records exist and if they exist they just connect.

After that, they try to simulate sending an email address and immediately they close the connection.

Simple as that.

What Next?

Now, I’d like to show you how to find bloggers that might link you back and how to find potential customers that you can outreach. Depending on what you’re doing, you can use Ahrefs and Linkedin.

Link Building

You can use Ahrefs to find bloggers who linked the content similar to yours and you can ask them to link you too.

This process we call link building and it’s something that makes your Google ranking positions higher.

The more links you get, the better ranking you achieve. Imagine that you recently published a great piece of content: How To Start a Successful Blog and now you want to do link building, but how?

Firstly, open Google and search for how to start a blog.

After that, just scroll down a bit and see top results.

These three pages are the top 3 ranked pages for the searched term.

Notice that I’ve ignored a zero position (answer box).

As you can see, the #1 page has total of 1.1K backlinks from 287 domains. The #2 page has 436 backlinks from 150 domains and the #3 ranked page has total 3K backlinks from 583 root domains.

If you’re wondering where does this data come from, it’s from Ahrefs SEO Toolbar.

Now, click on the toolbar below the result and it will redirect you to the page insights in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

When you open Ahrefs, you’ll see the Backlinks link in the menu. Please open it because all backlinks are pointing to the specific URL.

As mentioned earlier, there are 1.11K backlinks from 277 referring domains, but we need to filter them because we’re not interested in all these backlinks.

• Set to show only One link per domain
• Show only Dofollow links

Now, we have 204 do-follow backlinks from unique domains.

Finally, I can choose to show only pages in the English language.

According to Pareto Principle, the top 20% links will bring the top 80% search traffic, which leads to the next question: Is it worth investing time in outreaching the rest of 80% of links? It depends on the authority.

For instance, if you’re outreaching sites like Huffington Post and Forbes, it might be difficult to get links there. However, if you’re outreaching normal 50 - 55 DA pages, then you can focus only on the top 20% links.

As you can see, all referring pages are ordered by URL Rating, which is metrics from Ahrefs. If you’re not familiar with UR, here’s its definition.

URL Rating shows how strong is the backlink profile of a target URL on a scale from 1 to 100 (with latter being the strongest). This metric has the highest correlation with Google rankings, which means that pages with high UR tend to rank better in search engines.

Next, you need to export results from Ahrefs to CSV format which is very easy - click on Export.

After that, this will appear so simply click on Start Export.

Once you get results, you need to open page by page and find emails with some of the ways I’ve explained in this blog post.

Hence, you can always combine the use of the guesser and the verifier.

Sales Outreach

Sales representatives should use LinkedIn to find potential customers because everyone is using LinkedIn.

I’ll show you how to outreach a potential customer assuming that you’ve built a marketing software and targets are CMOs, CEOs of small companies, marketing professionals.

In the search box type content marketing and click on People with Content Marketing skills.

 

Now I'll choose to show only people whose location is the U.S. or the U.K.  

Next, I could upgrade my account to LinkedIn professional, so I can add other filters as well. Here are some of them.

Years of experience:

• Less than 1 year
• 1 to 2 years
• 3 to 5 years
• 6 to 10 years
• More than 10 years

Function:

• Media and Communication
• Marketing
• Entrepreneurship
• Sales
• Arts and Design
• Information Technology
• Operations
• Consulting
• Business Development

Company size:

• Self-employed
• 1-10
• 11-50
• 51-200
• 201-500
• 501-1000
• 1001-5000
• 5001-10000

For example, I can show people who:

• Have 3 - 5 years of experience
• Have function like Marketing or Entrepreneurship
• Are self-employed or work in the company up to 50 employees

Surely, there are other filters such as:

• Industry
• Current and past company
• Seniority level

In other words, I can find my potential clients, find their emails easily, and outreach. Simple as that.

Here is one real example. I just found a content marketing expert at Twilio Inc. His name is Ben Nunney and I’d like to outreach him, but I don’t have his name. Here is what I did.

I’ve opened Email Guesser and entered the next data, which gave me 28 guesses.

According to my experience, these two are the most used, but let’s see which one is real. For that reason, I’ve opened Email Checker and tested it.

A bit strange because both of these emails are valid and to be sure it’s not a mistake from Email Checker, I picked up another random email.

It’s not a mistake. There are two potential emails, so I should send a message on the first, and if I don’t see the answer I can use another one.

This way, you can easily outreach your potential customers. The market is big, and there is enough place for everyone.

Conclusion

I think you should always use different tools for verifying someone’s email because that way you’re protecting your email server reputation. Nobody wants to get blacklisted.

However, if you want to succeed, there will be a lot of manual work. For that reason, I think you should always use different APIs to automate the process. I won’t suggest any of these tools that I mentioned because I’m not affiliated with any of them.

Anyway, I think the best approach is to use an email guesser, whatever you choose or your developer can build your one, and after that, you can use some API for verifying.