You enter the IP address into a Who Is search and found that Google owns that address. If the email was sent from a program like Outlook, the IP address will likely be an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) such as Cox, Comcast, or Verizon.

If the email was sent from a webmail service like Gmail or Yahoo, the owner of that IP address will be those services. The next step in tracing the email depends on your results from the Who Is search to determine the owner of the IP. You have taken that IP address over to a site like to find out the owner of the IP address. You are now armed with the header information from an email and have located the originating IP address along with the date and time stamp from the header.