We have powerful tools that make it easy to collect potential candidates' contact info and send out mass emails. Many of us narrow down web searches by including a location in the form of a city name, an area code etc. (along with other keywords). However, these methods are not precise and the found candidates may not live where you think they do. The pages may be obsolete, too.

Here's a little trick that may help reduce your candidate list before you email everybody.
On Facebook, use "Find Friends" / Upload Contact File. Upload a text file with your email list. You will see Facebook display the list of people who are members - along with their location (and sometimes other useful information as well). If the location is wrong, it's time to remove the person from your list. (If some people are not members, there's no new info about them, of course.)

There are many other ways to "validate" information you find on the web about passive candidates - do others want to share some?

Irina Shamaeva,
http://www.linkedin.com/in/irinashamaeva