If you’ve done a Quick Person search, you may have gotten multiple profiles back. In this guide, we’ll walk you through best practices for how to pick the right one!



Recommendation 1: Focus on the top 5 profiles

Let’s say you did your search and got a long list of results. No need to panic – the profiles are stacked on the page so that the best results are at the top! This is factoring in how closely they match your search, how good their scores are, and the number of addresses and data sources to which they are tying.


If none of those first few profiles look good, that indicates either there was an error in your search (maybe a misspelling) or your person doesn’t have very good scores.

 


Recommendation 2: Addresses

When comparing two profiles to see which you want to use, look at the addresses underneath each name. There are two things to consider:

  • Do they match what I know of my person?
    • For example, if you know they live in Seattle, you should look for a residential address in that area. You can tell what type of address it is by hovering your mouse over the icon to the left. 

  • How many addresses are there?
    • The more the better. Wealthy people are often tied to a lot of addresses, which makes this a valuable indicator, and it also means there are a lot of records being pulled into that profile.

 


Recommendation 3: Data Sources

This column lists all of the sources from which the profile is pulling its data. Different sources tend to provide unique types of data and you can use that to your advantage!


For example, if you know that your person sits on the board of a nonprofit, you can look to see whether one of the profiles is tied to the Guidestar Directors data source.

  • Note: For more information on our key data sources and the types of information they provide, check out our Data Sources guide.



Recommendation 4: Attributes

This is quite similar to the Data Sources column. There are four potential attributes, indicating that the profile is tied to a particular type of data:

Heart: Giving history; it could be charitable, political, or both.

Office Building: Business ownership.

A person wearing a tie: Sitting on a nonprofit board of directors.

Anchor/Plane: Assets involving boats or airplanes.

  • Note: Keep in mind that the anchor attribute is not necessarily an indicator of wealth. Your person may own a yacht, or it could just be a cheap sailboat. 

 


Recommendation 5: Company View

The results page display is automatically set to Address Layout, which is why you are seeing the addresses listed for each profile. However, if you change this to Company view, it will instead show the organizations each profile is closely tied to. If you know that your person works at T-Mobile, you can look to see whether one of the profiles has that listed.