Let’s say you want to connect on Instagram with that special person you fancy or discover an old friend from your high school days. Maybe you suspect that your better half has more than one Instagram account and are simply curious whether or not you are right about your hunch.
Now, finding a specific profile on IG is not so easy if you don’t know how to go about it. Remember, the platform’s got 2 billion monthly active users. Plus, it is pretty generous about how many profiles an individual can have (currently, it lets you add up to five accounts with the same login credentials).
If you are looking for someone on Instagram, you’ve come to the right place. Here are six effective ways to dig up a profile in 2025.
Know How People Use Instagram
Instagram is a flexible platform, and people use it differently. Some create personal profiles to stay connected with friends and family, while others set up business or influencer accounts to reach bigger audiences. Understanding how the person you’re looking for might be using Instagram can really help narrow down your search.
For example, your old friend might run a small business or become a content creator, using Instagram to showcase their work. Their profile might use a recognizable brand name or logo rather than their actual name. Or, if the person you’re curious about is more private, they might have a closed account that’s not easy to find. Keeping this in mind will help set realistic expectations when you start looking.
Check Instagram’s Suggested Users
Instagram constantly tries to help you connect with others by suggesting new profiles. These suggestions are based on mutual friends, similar interests, and people you’ve interacted with on connected platforms like Facebook.
To use this feature effectively, start by following people you already know who might be connected to the person you’re trying to find. Instagram will then suggest other profiles linked to these new connections. It works like a trail of breadcrumbs—each follow brings you a bit closer to discovering the profile you’re after.
Explore Tagged Photos and Videos
Tagged content is a great way to find someone on Instagram, especially if you have mutual friends or common interests. Users often appear in photos and videos tagged by others, sometimes even if they aren’t active on their own profile.
Here’s how you can find someone through tagged content:
- Visit the profiles of mutual friends or people you know in common.
- Click on the icon for tagged posts (usually represented by a small frame icon with a person).
- Scroll through the tagged photos and videos to spot the person you’re looking for.
This approach is especially useful if you’re trying to find someone who attends certain events or is active within a specific group.
While exploring profiles, be careful to recognize and avoid fake influencers.
Use Instagram Stories and Highlights
Instagram Stories can also help you find someone because they’re often spontaneous and less carefully edited than regular posts. If you follow mutual friends, regularly checking their Stories might reveal interactions or mentions involving the person you’re trying to track down.
Additionally, Highlights—collections of Stories permanently featured on someone’s profile—can show important events, past interactions, or shared connections. Scrolling through these Highlights may help you discover the person you’re looking for, especially if they are casually mentioned or appear in photos.
Search Using Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags can be surprisingly helpful when you’re trying to locate someone on Instagram. Hashtags group together posts about specific topics, locations, or interests, making them great for finding people connected to particular communities.
For instance, if your old high school friend now takes photos as a hobby, searching hashtags related to photography clubs or local events might lead you straight to their profile. Similarly, if you suspect your significant other has a secondary account related to a hobby or interest, checking hashtags related to those topics might help uncover it.
If you’re using Instagram to build your business, consider learning how to find clients on Instagram.
Check Instagram’s Explore Page
Instagram’s Explore page suggests content based on what you like and who you follow. By engaging with posts related to the interests or activities of the person you’re trying to find, you’ll teach Instagram what you’re looking for, and it will start showing you related profiles.
Spend a bit of time liking, commenting, and interacting with relevant content. Soon, Instagram’s Explore page will start showing profiles and posts closely connected to your interests, helping you find the person more quickly.
Be Cautious and Protect Yourself
While searching for someone on Instagram, it’s important to stay cautious. Be prepared to handle situations like Instagram identity theft. Being aware and cautious can keep your search safe and effective.
Use IG’s Search Bar
Instagram’s search features are not as elaborate as some of the other platforms (like LinkedIn). But they can sure get the job done when it comes to finding profiles that match your search query.
To use them, click the magnifying glass icon that appears at the bottom when you open the IG app. If you know the relevant person’s username, things can be much easier. Just type it on the search bar that pops up and hit Enter.
Another option is a name search. But for this, you must have a first and last name to filter the search results to a manageable few.
Do you need to log in? Unfortunately, yes. Without an Instagram account, you can’t use the platform’s search features.
Check Under Followers
Not everyone gets to find the right account using a name search on Instagram. (After all, many people don’t use their actual or full name on their social profiles). But don’t worry, there are other ways to discover the individual you are looking for.
If you think he or she might be following you, then head over to your Followers list. If you know their friends, family, or coworkers, you would want to find those profiles, too, and look under Followers. Going through their Following list is also worthwhile since there is a good chance they may be following the person in question.
But brace yourself—this could be a fairly time-consuming activity depending on the number of followers (and how many they are following).
Try Syncing Contacts
Instagram, like all other social media, wants you to expand your network on its platform and spend as much time on it as possible.
So, it lets you sync your contact lists from elsewhere with your IG account. This helps Instagram identify its users you already know so you can easily connect with them on the platform.
To use this feature, open the IG app and tap the heart icon at the top right. Next, scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and click “See all suggestions”. This will take you to a page with two options—find your Facebook friends and follow people you know (from your phone’s contact list).
Depending on whether the person you are searching for is one of your FB connections or is listed in your contact list, enable the relevant option and wait for IG to work its magic.
Look Them Up on Other Social Media
Finding someone directly on Instagram can be tricky at times.
But if you have found or connected with a person on another networking site, then why not check for clues on that platform?
The fact is, nowadays, a lot of people have multiple social media profiles, which they cross-promote to boost subscribers. As a result, when you find them on one networking platform, it becomes super easy to discover them on another.
So, if you want to identify a specific person’s IG handle, you can simply access their profile on a different social media site (say, Facebook or TikTok) and look under the bio section. Checking their posts for IG links might also help.
Find Them on Nuwber
If you want to save time, Nuwber’s people search engine is your best bet. This is a data aggregator that maintains information about over 300 million Americans.
It collects data from reliable public sources (like government directories) and updates its records regularly to ensure accuracy.
To search its database, you only need a first and last name. You can also run reverse searches using a person’s phone number or email.
And the best part? Nuwber can help you discover various other details in addition to an Instagram account. For instance, it may produce personal info (say, age and marital status), social media accounts (from Facebook to TikTok), address history, financial information, and criminal records (provided they are publicly available).
Search on Google
When talking about free search engines, Google is the first thing that comes to many people’s minds. With a market share of just under 90%, this platform leads the search space by a huge margin. So, it makes every sense to try out its search services to discover an IG profile.
But what makes a Google search different from a social media search?
Networking sites can only look for content on their own platforms. Google, however, can discover published material from all kinds of third-party sources, like blogs and personal websites.
Google can also run image searches. So, for instance, if you have a picture of the relevant person, you can use it to search for information on the internet (even with a partial name) and hopefully discover enough clues to find their IG profile.
To Recap
Looking for someone on Instagram can feel like finding a needle in a haystack when you consider its mega-scale user base. But now there are plenty of tools to uncover an IG profile with minimum hassle.
The platform’s search bar, for example, lets you identify specific accounts with a name or username search. Checking under Followers and syncing contacts can also be helpful for finding people you know.
Other effective options include looking up a person on Nuwber, Google, and networking platforms like Facebook and TikTok.
