a single source, nothing corroborates it

Do not start a forum for the rankings

Across ten thousand product review keyphrases, no new or low-post forum appeared anywhere in the top hundred, and a registration check on every ranking forum found nothing recent. So launch a community only because you want to run one and will do the work. Where you host it barely matters: neither a subdomain nor the choice of software showed any penalty in the data.

The method

1. 01

   Do not launch a forum in order to appear in Google's discussions feature: start one only if you want to run a community and will do the work, because the data shows no new forum getting rewarded.

2. 02

   Put your forum wherever it is easiest to run: neither hosting it on a subdomain nor the software you choose showed any ranking penalty in the data.

What it returned

• 10,000

  Across 10,000 product review keyphrases the feature appeared in 7,085 results and linked 925 forums. Glen Allsopp found no new or low-post-count forum anywhere in the top 100, and a WHOIS check on every ranking forum turned up nothing registered more recently than 2021.

• The fourth most popular forum overall, What To Expect, runs on a community subdomain. Software seen across ranking forums included vBulletin, XenForo, phpBB and Discourse.

Sources

• The Discussion Forums Dominating 10,000 Product Review Search Results - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · Can New Forums Rank Well (Or, Should You Add a Forum to Your Site to Benefit from this SERP feature?) · 2024-02-14