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A treasure trove of business-planning information and resources is available online. To help you sort through all the riches, we’ve put together a list of popular sites that provide useful and reliable tips, tools, and examples — including dozens of real-life business plans:

 www.sba.gov: The Small Business Administration (SBA) site is far and away the best source of information about planning, funding, starting, and running a small business. You find useful FAQs, as well as counseling help and shareware software programs that you can download for a nominal fee.

 www.irs.gov/smallbiz: A great site if you run a small business or are self-employed. The IRS provides all kinds of useful industry and profession-specific information. The site also includes links to other helpful non-IRS business resources on the web.

 www.nfib.com: The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) calls itself the largest advocacy organization to represent small and independent businesses in the United States. Its website features a set of tools and tips that small business owners may find useful.

 www.score.org: The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) offers free consulting to start-up business owners. Along with a way to contact SCORE, their website includes updated success stories about a variety of small- and medium-sized businesses. Also useful is a list of business-related links.

 www.nolo.com: You can’t find a better place than Nolo to turn for basic information on the legal aspects of virtually any kind of business. The website also offers free advice, including info on insuring your home business, independent contractor arrangements, trademarks and copyrights, debts, bankruptcies, and employment law.

Lists of the hottest business-related websites have a way of going out of date fast — kind of like teenage fashion when you think about it. And a resource that appears hot to one would-be entrepreneur may not be suited for another. Your best bet is to scout around the web yourself, looking for useful resources. On search engine sites, the keywords business and plan lead you to plenty of generic business-planning information; if you Google “business plan website,” you will be taken immediately to countless pages that link to sources, some that offer free advice, others that sell products. For a more efficient hunt, tailor your search by using keywords specific to your business area (technology, retail, travel, children’s games, social media influencer, ethnic beauty products, financial services, and so on) along with the words business plan and see what you come up with. Make sure to bookmark any promising sites so that you can return to explore them later in more detail. Check out the nearby sidebar “Internet hotspots for business-planning info” for helpful website addresses.

Beyond sharing some basic business-planning tools, the Internet is also a great place to search for the latest information about competitors, markets, business trends, new technologies, you name it — all the things you need to know to put together a complete picture of your business environment. We’re constantly amazed at how much information you can find in corporate press releases, company home pages, executive bios, online business blogs or magazine articles, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrations, and thousands of other publicly available online documents.

And one last thing: Don’t be hesitant to simply email or dial up a potential source of information relevant to your search. You’d be surprised at how helpful others can be when you ask them in a polite and sincere manner. Kindness counts!

The Internet may be a gold mine of business information, but you may also find plenty of fool’s gold. Unlike typical print-based informational articles, which are typically fact-checked for accuracy, as we’ve sadly come to know much of the info on the Internet hasn’t been validated. Often the website providing the info is simply trying to sell you something or scrape and then peddle your private profile. So be cautious out there.

Follow three simple rules when you use the Internet for business research:

 Make sure the material is current. Many web documents aren’t dated, so you may not know whether what you read is the latest scoop or ancient history. Look for a date. If you can’t find one, dig a little further to make sure that the information is still relevant; you can often do this by cross-checking the facts on another website.

 Know your sources. In the wide world of the World Wide Web, you may be hard-pressed to know exactly where the stuff you read comes from. If you read a rave review of a new business-software program, and the review comes from a respected business source, you can put your faith in it (and just as true, a blatantly negative one might be from a paid troll). If it appears without a source, be suspicious. Similarly, if the grammar and spelling of the review seems odd — or clearly wrong — be on guard.

 Double-check key facts and statistics. If you use specific pieces of information — about business trends, markets, competitors, technology, and so on — as the central building blocks of your business plan, make doubly sure that they’re correct. If you build your financial projections on a forecast that the market for digital widgets will grow at 40 percent a year, for example, you better make sure that information is true and not some widget inventor’s private fantasy. And if the data is absolutely crucial to your plan, follow the advice of the old sage: If still in doubt, throw it out.