The art of a good obituary is to make a person most readers have never of heard of sound like someone they would of liked to meet. With the number of free obituary searches finding them has never been easier. Search engines like Obituary Central search databases from around the USA.
Writing an obituary is a specialized task. Often it needs to be done quickly before the next print deadline.
Ancestor Hunt has a very good free obituary search engine for recent obituaries. It also has links to local papers around the country with online obituary information. From the Alexander City Outlook to the Wyoming County Herald, they are all there.
If your searches need to be of a more international flavor then you will want to search Free Obituaries On-Line. It has Canadian obituaries and those from a selection of other nations. World Newspapers has a long list of free obituary searches.
Obituaries are normally printed after the subject has deceased. As Irish author Brendan Behan said “there is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” However obituaries are sometimes printed in error, before the person is dead. This has happened to such figures as Bob Hope and Pope John Paul II. Most famously this happened to Alfred Nobel. Inventor of dynamite. After reading himself described the “merchant of death”, Nobel founded the peace prize that carries his name. Its doubtful if a free obituary search would of prevented such mistakes.

Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in his obituary, April 9, 1959
US architect (1869 - 1959)

This article is an experiment in search engine optimization bases around the phrase free obituary search. According to my keyword finder tool this phrase is looked for 1119 times every 24hrs yet there are very few web pages (810) matching the phrase. Personally I think these numbers are off but let see what happens.