The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's BrokerCheck database is available at http://www.finra.org. Look under "Investors."

A new site http://www.helpforinvestors.org launched this summer by a coaltion of industry, regulatory and consumer-oriented groups, aggregates a number of sites for researching the backgrounds of brokers, investment advisors and firms.

Want to know if someone is a Certified Financial Planner? Go to http://www.cfp.net.  

The Securities and Exchange Commission site for looking up investment advisors and firms, with information from state and federal regulators going back a decade, is http://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov.  

The North American Securities Administrators Association has a robust investor education section on its web site: http://www.nasaa.org.

This set of sites offers helpful checklists of things to ask prospective advisors and even questions to ask yourself as you look for investment help. It's from the Chartered Financial Analysts Insitute. https://www.cfainstitute.org/about/investor/Pages/index.aspx.