Find Message Boards with BoardTracker

Note: BoardTracker is no longer in service.

What is BoardTracker?

BoardTracker is a search engine dedicated to only sifting through forums and online message boards. It's a highly targeted search engine and brought back relatively good results.

How To Use BoardTracker

You can simply navigate to the main BoardTracker home page and type in a term. To the right of the main search bar is a drop-down menu of categories; you have the option to narrow your search using this menu, or you can browse the categories directly below the search bar as well. In addition, you can also check out BoardTracker's Advanced Search options.

Searches are relatively good; for example, my search for Bill Gates predictably returned quite a few results. Each result has the icon of whatever particular message board or forum that result is from (if it has one), date the message was orginally posted, how many replies it's had, how many views, the poster's name or nickname, and a very brief annotation. I think a big improvement here would be to have the actual board or forum name very prominent in the search results as well.

BoardTracker Special Features

BoardTracker has a couple of special features; you can set up alerts,or you can save favorite threads to view later. Both of these options require a free registration.

Why Should I Use BoardTracker?

BoardTracker is an interesting way to search for message board threads; it's certainly much more simple to find what you're looking for than combing through millions of results in more general search engines. BoardTracker definitely could use some fine tweaking-the site design is a bit blah, and the search results could be improved as far as presentation-but overall, I thought BoardTracker had a lot to offer anyone who needs to search for something in a forum or online message board.