Internet Marketing Tips - Doing Research Online

Internet marketers have to do research all the time, whether it's keyword research, product research or whatever. That is, after all, what the search engines are for. Well, the search engines are not perfect and sometimes they let us down. How many times have you gone to a site to lookup something and got hit by a virus? I know it's happened to me quite often and had I not had my anti virus software, I would have been up the creek without a paddle. But even AV software isn't perfect. So what do we do? This article will give you a few suggestions.

At the top of the list is to look at the search engine listing itself. Google has a very nice feature that, while not perfect, does help some. If a site is reported to them to contain some dangerous virus, or they find it on their own, they post a message next to the listing saying "This site may be harmful to your computer." If you see something like that, use your common sense and don't go there. Very rarely are these false positives. Yes, a little while ago they had a human error that flagged every site as dangerous. But for the most part, these warnings are very accurate. Heed them!

Next, you want to look at the site in terms of, "How reliable is it?" For example, if you were going to research a new product and wanted to find reviews on it, you'd have little problem going to a site like Amazon. Why? Because Amazon is widely known and respected and the chances of getting a virus from them are slim to none. On the other hand, going to "Joe's Review Site" probably isn't going to give you that same warm and fuzzy feeling while visiting. It's not fair, but it's how things are. Less known sites are more prone to hitting you with a dangerous virus.

Finally, you want to make sure that whenever you visit a site online, whatever site it is, that you ARE protected. Yes, I said that no AV software is fool proof. There are new viruses coming out everyday and these companies have their hands full just trying to keep up with them, and yes, things can slip through. But having no protection at all is simply looking for a ton of trouble. I'm not going to recommend any particular AV software. You can do your own research on that...kind of a catch 22 in itself as you have to be careful about where you do your research. To that end, I recommend PC Mag's web site. It's reputable and you'll get some good info there.

It's a scary world out there. There are some days when I don't even want to go surfing, that's how bad it is. But if you follow the above tips, you will give yourself the best chance of not getting hit with something that you can't recover from.

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