As a community administrator, you've probably visited a few of the forum directories that are currently online and serving search results daily. If not, a quick search on Google for the term 'forum directories' will yield varied results and quite a few forum directories of all shapes and sizes.

I'd like to take this time to reach out and ask you all a few questions and express my thanks ahead of time to those that submit their input .

1). What do you feel is currently missing?
2). What do you feel is 'wrong' with those currently available?
3). What are your likes/dislikes?
4). How could one improve upon the idea?
5). If a new directory were to open, what would you like to see available?
6). How should results be displayed?
7). Would you submit your community to a newly developed directory?
8). Are there any specific features you feel "should be available"?


Feel free to expand your comments beyond the questions, I am simply looking to get a general idea and a feel for what community administrators would specifically want from a directory and how they feel it should be approached .


So with that, comment away .

Now, i'm going to be contraversal here, How many people actually go through forum directories, to look for forums?

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Hence the questions .

Quite a few people simply don't know they exist, quite a few search them and others simply find no use for them.

What we're looking into is not a directory of forums in general, but something more specific. Though, it's simply something we're looking into, exploring options and seeing what could, if anything, be improved upon.

I know they exist and I'm familiar with them, but I never use them.

I actually considered starting one, but I'm going a different route instead.

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I've sometimes used one when looking for a forum,I think they're more useful for backlinks to your site.

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I usually only use them to improve backlinks, and consider it as that, not as advertising.

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My personal feeling is that all they are really good for is a backlink.

There are many forum only directories and I belong to a lot of them and I may get 1 or 2 visits a month form all of them combined.

I agree there are not that many people that are going to use a directory to find a forum. They are just going to use a search engine. I have spent many hours adding and submitted to forum directories and regular directories. Maybe it’s my forum topic I don’t know, but to me it’s just a waste of time.

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Honestly, I just use them sometimes to get my url on more sites. I know it probably won't ever result in new members, but it may help a bit with any google search results

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They are useful for increasing your backlinks, however, I am more so looking for ideas on how one could improve upon the idea.

We've noted that quite a few people use them only for the above-mentioned purpose and not specifically for searching, though how could that be turned around?

What specifically would make *you* want to use a forum directory over another search engine if you could change something specific about it?

Also, in my experience, while Google is "top dog" in my books as far as search engines go, though searching for a specific forum topic on Google yields results I care nothing about. A great deal of it is even unrelated to my original query.

I don't use directories, only a couple of times. I only use them if im looking for something specific, but i can usually find what im looking for on AF.

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