The pace of exchange-traded product launches has been dizzying.

Ishares, a unit of BlackRock (BLK), is looking to launch a new set of bond funds, including products investing in financial or utility company debt. Charles Schwab (SCHW) recently joined several other companies in offering a dividend ETF. And there are even three "Dim Sum" bond funds investing in the debt of Chinese companies issued outside of China.

Despite all the innovations in exchange-traded products, this market still favors established players. Only 90 of more than 1,300 offerings hold nearly 80% of the assets. That begs the question: Are new offerings worth your attention?

It depends. While new ETFs often sound enticing, many are not viable for most individual investors because they are targeted to institutional and high-net worth clients. In fact, that's largely been the pitch from Northern Trust (NTRS), which returned to the ETF business this year after exiting in 2009.

But just as there are overlooked stocks and funds, experts say there are also overlooked indexes and ETFs. And several of these may be exactly what you're looking for in an investment idea. Investing pros say the best way to make sure a new ETF is right for your portfolio is to do your own screens. The sites mentioned below offer full-featured ETF screening tools. Most have a free tier of service, although some charge between $15 and $20 for premium service. None of these approaches or tools, when used in isolation, can help you build an appropriate portfolio for your style or risk tolerance. Each step, however, can help when selecting an appropriate ETF or comparing several options to each other.

1. Look for sectors and investing style first. Similar to building a portfolio with a mix of active or index mutual funds, using ETFs is also about finding the sectors and indexes you want exposure to help meet your portfolio's desired asset allocation. With ETFs (and index mutual funds), investors can actually buy the benchmark index that active managers have difficultly beating. At IndexUniverse, the ETF Classification System is built to help you search through styles and sectors throughout the universe of ETFs and other exchange-traded products. Because IndexUniverse focuses exclusively on indexes and ETFs, you won't find much general investing or even standard mutual fund information at this site.

2. Check performance. As some ETF investment objectives become narrower and even closely mimic the investing strategy of some actively managed mutual funds, performance screens are useful to see how the ETF tracks its index as well as broader indexes, like the S&P 500 or Russell 2000. The ETF screener at Morningstar.com is a good place to find ETF performance data. The tool also lets you see how specific criteria -- say an ETF with an expense ratio below 0.15% -- stack up against all ETFs. While Morningstar is building out its ETF coverage, and even working to rate managed ETF portfolios, advisers say the company's core strength continues to be evaluation of actively-managed mutual funds.

3. Follow the smart money. IndexUniverse has a screening tool that allows you to track the aggregate flow of money going into or out of a specific ETF. Why is this important? Flows largely track institutional money. Large changes in flows, particularly in smaller, lesser-traded ETFs can signal that the product has long-term potential or that investors are turning sour on it. (The largest ETFs such as SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) or PowerShares QQQ (QQQ) often show the largest inflows and outflows, but that is more a function of their size than investor confidence.) Once you've found a few funds in a specific sector you are interested in, experts recommend taking a look at the flow analysis to see if big investors are feeling confident about your choices.

4. Compare ETFs to stocks and mutual funds. If you are particularly interested in one stock, say, but would prefer the diversification a fund or ETF, search on ETFdb to see which ETFs have significant holdings in the company. This function on ETFdb, which stands for ETF Database, allows for an "inside out" search of ETFs. The site also offers a fund checker, which will show you which index ETFs most closely match specific mutual funds. A note of caution: If you have a lot of conviction about a certain stock, determine whether it actually makes sense for you to buy that stock instead of diversifying into a fund. And experts point out that just because you have a hunch about a stock doesn't mean a tool like this offers any more insight about whether that stock, or a fund containing it, is a worthwhile investment for your risk.

5. Search for performance trends. This step is a bit more technical, but active investors may want to take a look at ETFTrends, which offers a breakdown of how ETFs are trading relative to their long-term moving average. This can be a good way to measure the volatility of a specific ETF you may be considering and can give you an indication of both near and long-term direction for the ETF. Another technical site, ETFReplay , looks at so-called relative strength: This measure takes into account several performance and volatility factors to help investors isolate performance trends. Both sites are intended for traders and technical analysts, and may only be worth it for more advanced traders.