There could be a time when you need to search public criminal records online. Most people do so today to protect themselves and their families. Try to imagine this with me. You are hiring a nanny to take care of your kids while you go away for work. But you do not know anything about this person you are hiring. After watching the news and hearing horrifying stories about nannies who turn out to be child abusers, you decide that to search public criminal records online is the solution for some peace of mind.

The opportunity to search public criminal records online is a God-sent. You can save the time and hassle of running to the public record offices to do a physical search. What you need to do is just stay at home and do an online check at the websites that offer such services.

What's more, there are websites that offer this service absolutely free of charge. However, you should not expect much from these free services because the information they disclose depend on whatever is included in the public domain. Thus, there is no guarantee that the information here would be as updated as they should be.

If you are serious enough, you should search public criminal records on the internet using the paid websites. These are paid services. You search, you pay. They spend a lot of money maintaining their databases and sourcing for information from the different states in America. So it does make perfect sense to charge a fee for usage.

Collation of data is no joke here. Courts, telephone directories, local address books, churches, and housing agencies are just some of the sources paid services dip into. With all these information gathered, websites offering paid services can then assure you of more intensive searches when you want to search the Internet for public criminal records.

And the information here is updated constantly in real time. You would not have to worry about outdated information with paid services at all.

Perhaps the cost is an issue to most people. Many even have the perception that it is costly to run these background searches. The truth is, it is affordable to most folks. In fact, many of the services allow unlimited number of searches for less than $50.

With all of these advantages, it becomes more obvious that the better option to search public criminal records online is to go with websites offering paid services.