Aside from the reverse phone number, white pages' reverse lookup also offers a reverse address option, which enables you to find out who lives at the mystery address. Where do you actually get free white pages on the web?
It kind of makes you yearn for an alternative system. Normally, these are used to find someone's number by first putting in their name, and then their location. Almost all phones, both landline and cellular, have built in caller ID now, and that means numbers that are not blocked in some way are showing up with each call.
The price range is very cheap with a starting price of under ten dollars for one search while the unlimited plan is under forty dollars itself. The printed product not only has the line listings of every business in alphabetical order, but also ads that can be torn out and written on, as needed. Different people or companies often provide them with the information they gather for your convenience.
I hope I've shown that online residential phone number search programs will be easier to use than the normal paper phone directory, that they are just as trustworthy and might even provide more information than the local directory. Cell numbers are typically harder to track down and you won't find them in a free service.