Sometimes finding an exact match for an email address can be hard, so sometimes you need to find a pattern. What does that mean for your email search?
At some companies, employee emails follow a specific format, like firstnamelastname at gmail dot com. When you identify patterns like this, you can use them to try reaching someone at that company whose email isn’t listed on any apps or websites.
Tools like Hunter.io offer pattern recognition in emails. These tools use algorithms that search online for any email that might be viable from a particular domain.
Then, they return data as a multitude of email versions, some of them correct and some not. From that point, you can use good old trial and error to figure out which emails have the best chance of working with the help of verification tools.
Keep in mind that this method only works for more prominent companies or for domains that have a lot of emails associated with them. These companies have a defined structure in the way they create email accounts.
The companies also must have the information available to the public. It doesn’t matter where that information is on the web because the algorithms will find it. Still, it needs to be visible to everyone.