Investigating any company, potential investment or business opportunity is the first step most of us take before dealing online. While there are many ways to investigate an online company, only a few are effective.

How do you investigate a company to make sure it's not a scam or rip off ?? Do you just use google or ripoffreport, or are there more secretive methods that could held us all avoid possible scams ??

I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's take on this!