How to Do Online Research Before Buying Anything

The following is a guest post by Ann Smarty. Be sure to take a look at Ann’s SEO Consulting Blog and follow Ann on Twitter.

I’ve been in online buying-selling long enough to understand two important things which makes shopping via the Internet both irresistible and dangerous:

• Online shopping is convenient and money-saving: you don’t pay for gas to drive to the mall, sellers offer lower prices because they save on place, and doing research online is easy and lets you locate best prices;
• Online shopping is dangerous: there are plenty of scammers and even if you pay via secure methods like PayPal allowing to eventually return your money, you risk going into the long stressful process of opening disputes, issuing claims and waiting for the replies.

So to make sure your online shopping experience is both useful and enjoyable, let me share a few things how to do some proper online research in order to (1) locate the best price and save money and (2) stay away from Internet scam.

1. Use Google search tricks.

The first and most obvious thing for an online shopper to do is to search for the [seller's name] in Google. Unfortunately, more often than not that’s not enough. The vast majority of online merchants know what “Google reputation management” means: that said, they pay good money to online marketers to pimp their positive reviews to the top positions of the search engine results.

To find honest reviews, you will have to dig deeper, and here are a few ways to do that:

• Use Google’s search options (found behind “Show options” link in Google) to search through “forums” and “reviews”;
• Use the same search options to find most recent brand name mentions:

• Use FireFox addons to adapt Google search to your shopping needs:
  • WebMynd enables you to see results from Amazon, Yahoo shopping and Dawdle whenever you search Google for anything:

  

  • GoogAzon is another similar addon that lets you search Amazon simultaneously with Google search.

2. Frequent Online Shopping Communities

Shopping social media networks can be a great place to ask for advice and find honest reviews. That’s where you can meet experienced shoppers who will share their feedback and ratings on any seller or product.

Buxr is a good example of such a social network: that’s a friendly community of bargain hunters who discuss deals and rate them. Each deal has ratings and comments – which gives you an idea if it is worth a try. Additionally, the site has active forums if you need to ask a question:

Other useful shopping social media networks include:

• PriceGrabber (allowing to “watch” any product price until it drops);
• Kaboodle.com (which allows you to publish mini-blogs and share your wish lists);
• BeatThat! that lets users beat each others’ shared prices.

3. Leverage Twitter Search

Twitter search is an awesome tool that has a wealth of yet under-used possibilities:

• It displays real-time and real-life results;
• It has millions of users discussing any topic you can only imagine;
• It has powerful advanced search.

Twitter advanced search is what I’d like to look at a bit closer now:

• Search for people discussing local stores: search for Tweets near some place within XX miles; example: [near:tampa within:15mi];
• Leverage hashtags;
• Look for negative reviews: use :( sign when searching for anything; example: [iphone :(].

Well, as far as you can see, this online research won’t take you more than 15-20 minutes: the key is to do it right and use some less known tricks. What are your thoughts?