How to Find Someone on Instagram in 2023

What is the main purpose of social media websites? Undoubtedly, it is connecting people. But how can one contact a person on Instagram if he does not follow him or her?

The only way to do that is to search for this person’s account. Here users meet another problem: it often happens that other Instagrammers imagine nicknames or abbreviations instead of their real names and it may be challenging to find someone on Instagram. You will agree that it is still possible if you are aware of some unique methods of searching people on this social media service.

Look: this article will focus on several most effective ways of finding people on IG that can be used by everyone

How to Find People On Instagram

It is not a secret that it may seem challenging to find an Instagram account of one person if there are over 500 million active users on the platform. But modern algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram provide a variety of effective solutions on how to find friends quickly and easily. This article will tell you about 11 time-efficient ways of finding necessary accounts on the second most popular social media platform in the world.

Search Bar

The first bright way to subscribe to an exact person is to use a search bar provided in the application. When you open the app, you can immediately see the icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Most Internet users know for sure that this icon is often used by search engines and Instagram is not an exception. You can also find it easily even if you use a browser to view your IG profile. What’s next?

Naturally, you should enter your account first. In fact, you had better know an Instagram username to get a desirable result. When you tap or click the icon, you will see a search bar and several options depending on what types of accounts you would like to choose. They are filtered by Top, Account, Tags, and Places. If you do not plan to use these options, it is enough to tap the search bar again and you will see a line where you can enter the username. You can limit the choice of the search results tapping one of the options offered by the filter:

• Top. Used for all search results ranking profiles by their popularity and engagement.
• Accounts/People. The selection of this option will provide only people or accounts in the search results.
• Audio. Get a list of songs available in your region.
• Tags. This search of posts based on hashtags provided.
• Places. The search system identifies accounts close to your location.

It is worth mentioning that when you start typing the name of the account you look for, the system will offer you possible matching accounts automatically, so you can stop typing and select the one you have looked for if there is on the list. Since the number of such accounts can be quite long, use the scroll button to be able to see all of them.

You can open the necessary profile tapping it. Now it is time to decide what to do with the account found.

If it was a simple interest, you can look through the photos if it is not protected, but it is also possible to subscribe to it by pressing the blue ‘Follow’ button. Open accounts are added to the list automatically, while protected ones will get a request from your profile to approve it or not.

Location (city or place)

As it was mentioned before, the possibility to limit the number of accounts in search results by location is provided by one of the options below the search bar. It is called ‘Places’ and it allows seeing only those search results that are located in the same city where you are now. You can use this option if you make the following simple steps:

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Tap the search bar in your IG app or browser.
3. Select the ‘Places’ option provided under the bar.
4. Enter a username of the account or look through the list of all the accounts offered by the system by scrolling them.

Hashtags

One more easy way to find a post or an account associated with a unique hashtag is to use the option called ‘Tags’. It is also offered under the search bar and works in a similar way. However, it is important to remember that you should enter a keyword you try to find only with a # sign before it. It is a standard look of a hashtag on all media platforms and IG is not an exception.

There is one more thing to remember: only those accounts can be found by a hashtag that has associated themselves with it. Even if your friend enjoys makeup and shares photos of his or her works without tagging them, this account might be not added to the search results. How to find a person by hashtags?

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Tap the search bar in your IG app or browser.
3. Select the ‘Tags’ option provided under the bar.
4. Enter the hashtag with a # sign.

You will be offered a number of post with this hashtag. Click on the search result to see a list of posts with this hashtag (Top, Recent, and Reels). You can even follow the hashtag, not a person.

Facebook Contacts

If you have a lot of Facebook friends and want to follow their IG accounts too, it is possible to connect to your FB account and see who is available on IG.

It is not a secret that Instagram is a Facebook project so there is nothing surprising that these accounts are linked if they are registered using the same email address. You can add your Facebook friends to Instagram following these steps:

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Open your IG profile.
3. Tap settings and select the section called ‘Discover people’.
4. Press the ‘Connect to Facebook’ button of blue color.
5. Press ‘Continue’ to allow the app and website to share information about you.
6. Log in to the FB account.
7. Press ‘Continue’ to authorize FB access to IG.
8. Wait for a couple of seconds until your list of friends is compiled.
9. Select the account you want to follow or tap the ‘Follow All’ button at the top of the web page.
10. To return to the previous menu, tap the ‘Back’ button in the upper left corner of the screen.

Phone Contacts

It is possible to extend the list of familiar people to follow by adding accounts of people from your contacts. It is one of the ways how to find someone on Instagram without knowing their username since the main information used for this kind of search is a telephone number. Naturally, not all people can be discovered in this way on IG but it is still a chance to check this approach if you do not know the username. The procedure looks similar to the previous one:

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Open your IG profile.
3. Tap settings and select the section called ‘Discover people’.
4. Navigate to the ‘Contacts’ option.
5. Press ‘Connect contacts’ to allow the app and website to sync and store your contacts on IG servers.
   
6. Tap ‘Allow’ if your phone asks for Instagram access to the contacts.
7. Wait for a couple of seconds until your list of contacts is compiled.
8. Select the account you want to follow or tap the ‘Follow All’ button at the top of the web page. If there are no associations of IG accounts with any phone numbers, you will see a message saying ‘No contacts available’.

WhatsApp Contacts

When it comes to WhatsApp users, most of them are added to your book of contacts automatically so they will be available on the list too.

There is one more way to add contacts too:

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Open your IG profile.
3. Tap the Hamburger menu button (three-line button).
4. Select ‘Follow and invite friends’.
5. Tap ‘Follow contacts’ and proceed with the ‘Get started’ button.
6. Tap ‘Allow’ if your phone asks for Instagram access to the contacts.
7. Wait for a couple of seconds until your list of contacts is compiled.
8. Select the account you want to follow or tap the ‘Follow All’ button at the top of the web page. If there are no associations of IG accounts with any phone numbers, you will see a message saying ‘No contacts available’.

Following this procedure, you will also be able to see other options in the ‘Follow and invite friends’ section. It also gives an opportunity to invite friends by email, WhatsApp, SMS, and other popular ways.

How to find someone Instagram by email

Many users claim that it is impossible to search for someone on IG by email, but it is a great mistake.

Naturally, you can’t do that directly in your app, but it is possible to discover people IG accounts using third party services.

1. Facebook. One of the ways to do that is to enter an email address on Facebook and find this person there. If he or she accepts your friendship invitation on FB, you will be able to connect to your FB account and add this person using the way mentioned above.
2. Gmail. It is possible to enter the email address and get as much information about a person as possible. Some of this data can be later used for the IG account search. Also add a someone’s email to your contact list and connect contacts as we discussed above.
3. Outlook + LinkedIn. It’s one of the ways to know more about a person using free tools. Open Outlook, add a person’s email as a contact, go to a tab “LinkedIn”. If there is any account you’ll see it. Thus you’ll get a real name and occupation.

And don’t forget to look for username using local part. For example, if you know that someone has email like ‘[email protected]’, don’t hesitate to search for ‘shadylady’ on Instagram.

However, it is not the only way to use email for getting IG accounts to follow. There are people search engines available on the Internet.

Suggested Users

If you use IG for at least a couple of days, you may spot that the system offers you profiles of people you might know to extend the list of people you can follow. However, if you have just registered or can’t see this information at the moment, you can look through the list of IG suggestions yourself. For this purpose, you can use an approach similar to the search of Facebook friends and phone contacts.

1. Enter your IG account.
2. Open your IG profile.
3. Tap settings or the Hamburger menu icon and select the section called ‘Discover people’.
4. Navigate to the ‘Suggested’ option.
5. Select the account you want to follow or tap the ‘Follow All’ button at the top of the web page.

Your friend’s following

It is natural that you may be acquainted with people followed by your friends and you can easily find them too.

It is enough to open the profile of your friend and press on the number of people he or she is following at the moment. You will be offered two options: people and hashtags. The first one will provide a list of accounts with the ‘Follow’ button next to each of them. You can open the profile, learn more about this person or brand and follow it. The second option allows following a certain hashtag followed by your friend. If he or she does not do that, you will see a message notifying about that.

Google

You may wonder whether it is possible to search for people if you have no IG account. It is not a secret and Google knows everything and its search engine can help you find a necessary person on IG even if you are not registered there. You can discover the account by name, hashtag, username, phone, URL of the website, etc. It is enough to enter this information in the search bar!

Ask your friend

It goes without saying that some people keep their privacy and do not connect their IG accounts to FB, mobile phone or email address.

However, they still decide to follow other people and share their own posts with their own subscribers. If you want to follow a certain individual, you probably have common friends who might be aware of the nickname used by him or her. Consequently, you can ask your friend about that and stop wasting time on a useless and time-consuming search. Use a direct message, SMS, email, or any other messaging service for this purpose.

With a Picture

Searching for people on Instagram can be also manual. You can browse hundreds of accounts filtered by location or hashtag and look at the profile pictures. Despite the fact that this process can be exhausting and takes much time, you will be surprised to find out how many familiar faces you can see there.

There are situations when you know the name but can’t remember the surname. It is possible to enter this name and check the pictures of these accounts to find a person you need.

Influencers discovery

If you’re looking for a profile with more than 1 000 followers you could use search in influencer marketing tools (like trendHERO).

You can add filters like ‘category’ and ‘location’ to find someone on Instagram. It could be influencers, doctors, trainers, musicians, etc.

These tools could help you to find someone by criterias such as location, number of followers, text in bio, category and others. It could be perfect if you’re looking for a doctor or a couch. Good news – basic search is available free of charge. Try it for free

What to Do If You Can’t Find Someone on Instagram

It is possible that sometimes you can’t find a person on IG no matter how hard you try. There are several possible reasons for that and therefore, the solutions to them can be different too. If you have difficulty in finding the right account, consider the following:

1. Check the correctness of a username if you search by name.
2. The account you search for can be blocked, deactivated or does not exist already, so it is necessary to ask the account owner for a new username.
3. Your own account could be blocked and you should contact this person to unblock it.
4. Instagram may face some bugs so it is better to try the search later if you are confident that a user with such a name exists and is active.
5. Instagram can shadow-ban certain posts, so they can become inaccessible for other users (if you search by hashtag, for example).

Conclusion

There are many different ways how to discover people on Instagram and most of them do not require special knowledge and skills. It is enough to have an app and take advantage of its features to be able to find people you would like to follow.

At the same time, there are also alternative methods of finding people on IG and they can be very effective in some cases too.