2014 Overland & 4x4 Forum Statistics

Four years ago I started collecting overland and 4x4 vehicle-based forum statistics.

Overland Internet Forums & Magazines

I was interesting in tracking the number of registered users, threads and posts on the forums and providing a comparison on the top websites.

The challenge for 2014?  Could the popular forums keep the growth momentum up and were the thread counts increasing?
What about the magazines?  Are they challenging the forums for content or are web users divided between the content creators (forum users) and content consumers (magazine & facebook subscribers)?

Here is an overview of the previous years: 2012 | 2013 | 2014

A few websites stand out in 2014 which include ADV Rider, Expedition Portal, Horizons Unlimited and Prado point.  A detailed list of all the websites (forums & magazines) are at the end of the blog post.

2014 to 2015

Forum Statistics 2013 to 2014

In 2013, the media focused on "Overland Travel", with various vehicle manufacturers using overland travel to prove new vehicles (i.e. Land Rover / Range Rover) and in the USA, "overland" was a buzzword with plenty of new brands attempting to capitalize on the overland journey rather than the destination.

Google Image Search: Overland Travel Forum

Twitter and Facebook websites boomed with new Followers and Likes, whilst the traditional forums hummed with new users and topics.

"A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users." Wikipedia

Over the last two years I have annually recorded various internet forums, monitoring the user growth, thread count and active posts numbers. You can read the 2011 and 2012 overland forum stats via previous blog posts.

In this post, I summarize the numbers from February 2013 to January 2014.