Search engines and directories are the best way to find chat rooms.

Finding the right chat room means you'll be in the best place to chat with other people who share your interests or experts on things you are interested in.

So, next time you want to find a chat room where you can swap ideas on how to find a good school in your local area - remember these tips!

Directories

Wouldn't it be great if there was one long list of all the chats that were going on right now? Unfortunately there isn't!

Because the internet is so big and some chats take place on the web and some use special programs there aren't any really good complete lists of live chats. That makes finding the chat room you want a bit tricky.

There are lists of web chat rooms on the major search directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo and Excite which can be good starting points.

Know what you want

The first thing to ask yourself is what sort of chat room you want. For example, do you want to find other chatters who are in the same area or country as you?

Let's say you wanted to ask someone on a chat room about school tests and exams for your kids.

It wouldn't be very useful if the chat room you are in is full of people from overseas whose kids have completely different exam systems.

On the other hand, any parenting chat room would be fine if , let's say, you wanted to find tips on how to get kids to sit down and do their homework - it's a global problem!

Don't forget though that the time zone changes in different countries. So, imagine you go to a chat room which usually has a lot of Americans, but this time you go at nine in the morning - it probably won't be very full because it's four in the morning there!