The first thing to consider is your hunting style... you should do this almost sub-consciously because inevitably what you will find is you will be drawn and you will fall in love with areas that will be suitable for your hunting style.
You will find that you will be "flying" around on Google Earth and you will see an area on the screen that you will look at and really like what you see. When I see an area like that I will zoom in take a closer look at the area using the tilt and rotate functions to manipulate the aerial viewpoint to get a better feel for the terrain. I also have a USGS Topographical overlay that I will toggle back and forth between the satellite image and the topo image. This helps me better see and understand the terrain and also helps in identifying the locations that are marked out on the topo maps like water sources, peaks, trails, and food sources. I will also use the topo map to identify more subtle things in the terrain like saddles, small draws, or slight ridges that could be used as travel corridors, escape routes, or used to my advantage in some way. Another benefit that I have found is that I've identified roads and trails that are not indicated on the topo maps but clearly show up on the satellite imagery... and on the flip side I've identified roads and trails indicated on the topo map but they no longer appear to be maintained on the satellite imagery (I definitely make note of these).
Once I decide that an area is a place that I'd like to really take a deep dive into researching I will make several folders to save my findings in. I have a folder with all the water sources marked with a blue dot. I have a folder with all the peaks marked with a yellow dot. I have a folder with all the roads and trails marked with red lines, and a folder with all the ridges marked with yellow lines. With white dots I will identify glassing spots and what I would think would be the best route to access them.
When all of these areas are identified and saved into the respective folders I will "turn on" and "turn off" the different folders just to get a feel for the information that I have identified. I can look at the water sources and then turn on the road/trail folder to see the proximity to the different roads and trails. I can turn on the glassing spots and see where they are at relative to water sources, food sources, saddles, escape routes.
I guess you could say that my version of E-Scouting is just marking anything that looks good... and the area with the most things marked generally gets the majority of my attention moving forward.
Full disclosure, I have already identified the area that I will focusing my attention on this year. My wife peeked over my shoulder one night as I sat in the chair while watching TV and with a confused look on her face asked me what all the markings meant... the screen looked like a mess of lines and dots all over the map.
I've done enough E-Scouting on this area now that I have actually identified several little "mini-spots" within the larger area and that is what drives where I will select to make my basecamp. I've identified several good camp locations on the satellite imagery and I have each of those spots already prioritized. I'll take a drive down to the area sometime this summer and investigate in person those camp spots and solidify which one is first choice, second choice, etc.
I would also like to take a couple short hikes to some of the glassing spots I've identified just to get my own eyes on those areas, and maybe if a couple of the water sources are as out of the way as they appear on the satellite images I just might put up a trail camera or two.
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