Is it worth being listed on big boards?
 

at all or is it more a badge of honor?

are there major benefits traffic-wise or not?

I have a site that, although it fits the site submission criteria, I don't personally consider a big board.

... is it worth it? What do you give up exactly in exchange for being listed?

the more sites you're listed on, the more contacts between sites will be refered... this may be good, sometimes it is not... depend on the flood of spam you get after this kind of listing...

people even visit or use big boards anymore?

Every now & then... Mostly in the past to see if my server admin slipped up in the middle of the night and the servers went down... :p (I've got that covered separately now)

Its not bad to be listed there but I personally think it (BB) is losing stature due to the absurd waiting time.. You can pay $$ to get listed quicker, but that is crap, IMO.. I spend hours and hours a day administrating my forums, and I have a full time job as well.. It DOES NOT take that long to verify that a forum qualifies for "Big Board" (500k+ post) status, yet there is an large backlog (supposedly) over there now days.. And if you want to get listed right away, you have to pay.... I guess advertising isn't paying there.

Eventually (maybe sooner than later) someone is going to dupe their system of monitoring sites and open a new and improved "Big Boards" site that actually contains every site that meets the qualifications.. When was the last time they interviewed Gaia or anyone else?

They are cutting their own throat by not keeping up with what they are supposed to be, IMO... The more forums they add, the more that link to them, and the more their directory grows = more traffic = more "clicks" on the ads & recognition, etc.. etc.. Heck, if anyone could have had a "Big-Boards" forum, they would have been in a good place for that.. (side thought)

I enjoy checking in there every now and then to see where I place with other admins / forums that I have been "competing" with (not directly - just for fun) for years now, but very little, if any of my traffic comes from there... My traffic comes from Google, Yahoo and other related sites, blogs and so on..

If you don't get listed in the BB directory... Don't sweat it unless it is a metric of standing to you... And, again, if you have the minimum and the money, sign up... If you don't... Your community will still be what you and your members make it..

David

I know - I put it badly. I will eventually put my board up there but probably mainly so I can legitimately talk to people who have experienced the same issues as I have with a 'bb' not for any major extra traffic etc.

From reading the replies it doesn't seem any great advantage being listed there apart from what I've stated. It certainly doesn't open the floodgates for traffic.

The alexa stats don't look too encouraging either
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...big-boards.com

Thanks people:up:

I paid the $20 for the express listing, figured why the hell not. On a positive note, he added me right away. On the other hand, he didn't even bother to check my site (or get the name right), and all of my "correction" submissions (where you add in the actual site details) have been completely ignored.

I'd say $20 gets you 2 minutes but that might be optimistic.. ;)

Big Boards was a good resource for admins to track site stats. It was irrelevant as far as SEO goes. Yes it gives you an extra link, but, not much traffic from the link. I think I get maybe one hit a month from my listings.

Now that it never gets updated, or updated slowly, it is useless.

After several months trying to get my forum reviewed and included in big-boards.com I discovered I could pay a USD 20 fee to purchase an Express Review within 5 business days. I paid using paypal and those 5 business days were due yesderday.

Now I lost 20 bucks, never got contacted, and they don't answer my emails.

Then file a Claim at paypal and their account will be hold till they resolve your issue ;)

We are listed with bigboards but the stats are way of, we modified our site so our forum changed address and I have been trying to get biboards to change our URL for years so I don't think very highly of their services.

Yes I could do that, but then my site will never be listed at big boards.

I'd be the fifth most visited vbulletin board in my language, and I intend to make noise about it.

I'm with you on this. My site still has no details, I'm half tempted to paypal him 25 cents and say "hey, I paid $20, the least you can do is get my information correct".

Honestly it's a great opportunity for someone who actually gives a damn to start up another site like that one. With a little attention and an owner that isn't profiteering off of his laziness, it'd (imo) pull decent revenue in no time.

--------------- Added [DATE]1203861977[/DATE] at [TIME]1203861977[/TIME] ---------------

Not really related to the topic at hand, but speaking of floods, I had my site /.'ed once. It was a rather unpleasant experience. "There are currently 5,899 members online. (100 members and 5,799 guests)". I could almost hear my CPU screaming.

yup.

how does big boards update the stats to keep them up to date?

When a board gets listed, does it have to install some kind of webservice that big boards can read from?

There is a code you can put on yout pages to optimize the info to Big Boards, but I don't think it is nessecary for the basic info, they get that in some other way.

It seems they don't update anymore? I sent them a lot of e-mails to update my board info.. and no reply and no updates..

I finally filed a claim on paypal and the next day I got contacted. The BB admin said he never got a paypal notice telling about my payment.

Anyway, I'm fine now, I withdrew the complain. I inserted their tag too in order to see my stats updated.

If anyone is interested in starting an alternative to BigBoards with me then please get in touch.

Thanks, Paul.