It is the first time police have harnessed the internet in their search for the 35,000 people missing in Australia every year.

National Missing Persons Co-ordination Centre spokeswoman Leonie Jacques said websites such as MySpace and Facebook were major  hubs for young people, who make up almost  60 per cent of  missing persons.

Missing person gallery"The issue of communication is so vital we needed to go to where our young people go to communicate, not only with each other but to gather information," Ms Jacques said.

National Missing Persons Week, which starts on Sunday, will focus on young people after targeting the elderly last year.

"No matter how long a person is missing it's very traumatic," Ms Jacques said. "Often the missing person is stepping into unknown circumstances and it's also traumatic for the family."

Newcastle mother Gina Krieger said she welcomed any publicity that could trigger a sighting of her son Jay Brogden, who went missing after fishing at Cannonvale, near the Whitsunday Islands, on April 21 last year.

Mr Brogden, who would be 22, gave his fishing rods to a friend, whom he planned to meet the next day, and said he was going to visit his aunt a few blocks away.

"It's just hard to accept that someone disappears off the street," Ms Krieger said.

"He had broken up with his girlfriend and he was a bit upset over that but he was still looking forward to coming home (to Newcastle) and starting a life here."

A few days before vanishing, Mr Brogden had asked his mother to book him a flight to Newcastle.

The head of the Queensland Missing Persons Unit, Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Graham Walker, said police had a 99 per cent success rate finding missing persons.

Of the 4101 people who went missing in Queensland last year, 4086 had been located.

Relationship breakdowns and mental health issues were behind the majority of cases, he said.

But there was no hard and fast rule about where they went. "Some people just don't want to be found," he said.

"If someone goes missing from Sydney they could go and start tobacco picking in Mareeba or fruit picking in Bowen and live transiently

"It's not like they all decide they want to come to the Gold Coast for a holiday like all the Underbelly gangsters."

Another difficulty was that privacy laws restricted what  police could tell families after a  person was found.

"Quite often we will get people located safe and well, they've reported to a police station, found out they were missing and said "look, I just don't want mum and dad to know where I am, or a wife or a boyfriend," Sergeant Walker said.

Michael Wray

Source: news.com.au