"How did you find us?"

This is something I can't make a forum without. I will always have a custom profile field or official thread for new members to simply let me know (in private or public (sometimes I make the profile field private)) how they found my forum. You'll start to get especially excited when your active members have "Google.com" in this field. :p

Does anyone else use this anywhere on their forum? How has it benefitted you?

 

Awstats tells me how most people found us. Outside of the referer field, I'm not really interested in who/how someone got to my board, but that they're spending time time there now.

 

I have this profile field on every forum I set up. I have the settings set to e-mail me for every new registration too so that I can see where every new member comes from.

You're right that it does get exciting when you see some members saying they found the site from Google. But when you're to the point that 95% of your new registrations are from Google, it's not too exciting anymore. :lol:

 

I haven't really bothered with this, since I can see referring sites in the stats and referring members in the profiles.

 

I haven't done that but I think I will on my up coming board

 

We have one of those threads, Infact I do not think I have ever run/created a forum without one. There are better ways to find out how a member or user found you though. Currently I have a refferal url system in place which tracks where a user came from, how many impressions/clicks an advertisement or link received etc;

 

I sometimes ask new members how they found us in their welcome threads.
I usually hear it's from Google or another forum like our own.

 

Found the site from a post by Brandon over at Admin Talk.

 

I create a sticky thread with "How Did You Find Us." I think its very useful. You can find out from your members what advertising was actually effective in getting members to join your site and which was not.

 

Pretty much this. Although I think I ended up completely forgetting about the thread.

 

found it on google

 

I found a thread that said "Being sued by IPB" or something along those lines, thought it was a funny title, read it, and decided to join..
Seems like a good place for discussions among owners.