BoardReader.com is a search engine returning results from over 700,000 online forums and message boards. These forums and message boards are maintained by a variety of commercial and non-commercial entities such as magazines and special interest web sites. This is a different group of messages from the archive of UseNet postings archived at Google Groups (formerly Deja.com).

BoardReader allows users to search forums in 14 "Topics" (Automobies to Outdoor Recreation) with numerous sub "Categories" in each "Topic." Results can be sorted by "importance" (relevance), date, or the number of replies in the thread.

Investigators can benefit from searching these boards in search of people reporting defects with client's or competitor's products, or attorneys might find other individuals reporting similar problems to their own clients'. For example, a search of the "Automobile" topic and the "technical" sub-category for the terms "Explorer tires accident" returned 196 message threads, including one referring to a Firestone/Explorer blow-out in 1999, long before the tire recall; complete with a link to pictures of the tire that clearly had separated from its tread.

One MAJOR drawback to searching the site is a searcher MUST select one of the categories to limit the search. It does not allow searches across all (or even more than one) category. This is a major difference between BoardReader and Google Groups' archive - at Google Groups, a searcher can conduct a broad search simultaneously throughout all of the groups.