ResearchA Guide to Online Research for Treasure Hunters
In a word: don't! That is, don't take the word of every website that you find in your online searches. While the Internet is a virtual "gold mine" for research, it will more often be a mine of an entirely different substance when it comes to treasure hunting. The last thing you want to do is head off with your metal detector and drive out to some deserted place to drag around for weeks based on some wild goose chase told by an online bard.
Nevertheless, you want to be able to get some kind of use out of the Internet. Internet research is one of the handiest tools in other fields, and it can be used in treasure hunting and archaeological research as well. It's just that the nature of treasure hunting tends to draw an unusually huge fruitcake factor compared to other research topics on the web. Hopefully, with some caution, you can shovel some of the useless misinformation out of your way and get some actual hard facts.
First off, I would be quick to discredit any site that hasn't been updated since last century. Quite a surge of sites aimed at treasure hunters seems to have cropped up around the 1990's. These sites look very cheesy even by 1995 standards, and I've read many a "fact" on one of these kinds of sites which was easily disproven within minutes of seeking a second opinion from any other source. If the site looks like it was designed by a home-page user in the Clinton era, dump it. You were getting a headache looking at the clashing background, blinking/scrolling bold text, animated gifs, and pop-ups anyway. I know this sounds like judging a book by it's cover, but besides, any true facts that did happen to be on such a site would need to be checked with a modern source to verify that somebody didn't just beat you to the stash you were going to seek.
The three keywords to keep in mind are concurrence, concurrence, and last and most important of all, concurrence. Look for at least three sites that say the same thing, and check them to be sure one didn't just copy from the other. Write down the name of the pirate, bandit, miner, or whoever the principle character of the story is and look them up in encyclopedias, biographies, history books, and other websites. Get the geographical location and read up it's history independent of any treasure-hunting interest. A history of the area written by a local in invaluable; the thing you want to steer clear of is whopping fantasies made up by somebody who's never even been to the place. Rest assured, you will still have plenty of places to research after this; new significant finds of archeology, history, and yes, even honest, valuable treasure are found and reported every year.
Next, since you're reading this article, it's assumed that you aren't a full-time professional treasure-seeker. That means that with deciding which potential hot spots to investigate, you're probably better off seeking out the out-of-the-way spots with only a promise of modest reward than you are becoming the ten thousandth person to prowl around Arizona looking for the Lost Dutchman's mine. Other hunters, with time and resources to last for decades, have had time to scour every inch of the most famous known lost treasures. By all means, if you're confident that you can do better than those who went before you, a little thing like my saying so won't stop you.
As long as your expectations are realistic and you do your homework, there's no reason why you can't make treasure hunting at least interesting and fun if not at least a little profitable.