Becoming an information provider for GFIS is not always an easy task. If your institution does not already have a RSS system in place, the time and effort required to create the RSS feeds may seem daunting. However with the help of the GFIS team, most any institution can become an information provider within a short time.
Aside from the prestige of being part of GFIS there are also tangible advantages. For example, within the USFS Treesearch Web site (http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/) we are able to track our visitor habits (e.g., how they came to find our site, how long they view our pages, and how often they return). After reviewing our Web server log files, we determined that GFIS is a "Top 10" site for bringing traffic to Treesearch! This data also shows that visitors from GFIS also continue to "click though" our side to additional pages and stay on our site longer than most other referrers. All good news if you wish to bring regular and interested visitors to your Web site.