When I acquired this website in 2018, many people gave me strange looks and told me that this type of website was dying. “Joy, who else uses forums?” Well, depending on the traffic in the last 30 days on the Local search forum, the answer to this question is: a lot. More specifically, thanks to the massive increase in Google rankings in the last 60 days, we are seeing 144% more traffic than this point in 2023.



SEOs like Lily Ray have talked a lot about the rise of forums in 2023. But just in the last two months, I’ve seen forums of all kinds completely dominate the local search engine results pages (SERPs) that our customers and most small business owners compete for.

It doesn’t seem to be limited to any particular industry. We see this in legal, home services, automotive, healthcare and many other areas.

Let’s look at some examples to see how it has changed in the last 60 days.

This is what the “wallpaper removal” looked like in November 2023.

Fast forward a few weeks and you’ll see the changes begin.

Now, in 2024, a total of four different forum websites rank in the top half of the first page, compared to zero in November.

Let’s look at another industry.

For one of our clients who specialize in family law, this lawyer was at the top of Page 1 in the “Best Divorce Lawyer” category in November.

In December, the change was made to display forums at the top of the page above the local pack results.

In November and December we saw a massive increase in traffic and rankings for smaller niche forums. It’s not just Reddit.

This is what the Avvo forum looks like in the legal sector:

A forum in the field of painting:

A forum for the automotive industry:

Why do these pages rank better?

The content is very different from most of the content on each website. For example, this thread I’ve started ranking for some very competitive keywords in the personal injury attorney space over the last few weeks. The thread is a client’s perspective on why you should or should not hire a personal injury attorney to represent you. This is in stark contrast to the ranking of the other sites, which are all lawyer sites that tell you a very similar story on every page.

With the rise of AI content and SEO practices aimed at bringing your site up to par with current rankings, this is a trend that shows Google may be heading in the opposite direction.

Forums are probably the most extensive Moderated by humans Content on the Internet. As the owner of one Forum and a moderator for one of Google forums For 12 years, I can say with certainty that forum moderators generally have a zero tolerance for self-promotion and fake content. In a world full of made-up social media reactions and fake reviews, forums are one of the best places to get honest, unbiased, sales-free advice.

Why should I care?

We’ve already seen forums take traffic away from small business websites that don’t rank as high as they once did.

We also see that forums rank on Google for brand searches (e.g. “Walmart” or “Walmart reviews”).

Along with sites like Yelp, Facebook, or BBB that have been competing for years, it’s quickly becoming one of the most common things I see when ranking our clients’ brand names.

This can be problematic if the thread has a negative bias. For example, this Reddit thread about a multi-location home service company now ranks the brand name at #4, talks about how fraudulent it is, and quickly recommends a competing company:

The thread is a few months old, but only started ranking in the last few weeks.

Given how much Reviews influence consumer behaviorThis is something all brands should monitor regularly.

What should I do?

It’s important to monitor how search results change over time and adjust your strategies accordingly. Because of these changes, we launched an extensive series of tests to find out how business owners should deal with this change and the smartest way to stay in control of how their business appears on Google.

We hope to publish some of our findings about what works and what doesn’t in the coming months.