Relieving the Torrent Torrent
I have noticed, by using tools like 103 Bees, that my blog gets a lot of hits from people Googling for various Torrents. Haruki Murakami Torrents, author torrents, music torrents. Mostly authors who get mixed up with my post about Grokster that advocates BitTorrent technology and is sidebarred by my book reading list.
So I thought I'd give people a quick guide to actual Torrent search engines which will help you get to your destination more quickly and spend less time looking at blog entries that aren't going to help you.
Desktop Wares
If you go to openwares.org you will find Torrent Search in their top 10 downloads. Currently with about 620,000 downloads, this is a very popular tool for searching for torrents. Or do yourself one better and get the Firefox add in here. This actually is a meta search that includes over 30 of the top torrent search engines. So it's a good one stop shop.
Web Sites
If you aren't that committed, TorrentScan will let you search any of 17 torrent search sites one at a time. But they have HUGE pop up ads. A small price to pay if you just want to find a few torrents, really annoying if you make a habit of it. This turned up 7 results for "Numan". [Edit: Mavol, in the comments below noted (somewhat rudely) that TorrentScan does let you search sites including the one that I found performed the best, so it couldn't have the worst results. This is true.]
With a highly crude home page, TorrentSpy is looking to be on the cover of the next congressional report about filesharing. No popups that I can see. And they have a very nice search utility that looks beautiful. This turned up 12 results for "Numan".
Torrentz.com also has good rich information in the search, but only turned up 2 results for "Numan."
ISOHunt.com has very very good information, and turned up a staggering 84 hits for "Numan" - even with misspellings like "Newman."
So, with 84 hits in my highly unscientific study, no popups and good information, ISOHunt is probably your best bet for finding the Torrents you are looking for.
Lastly, if you'd like to read up on Torrents, there's BitTorrent for Dummies.
UPDATE: ISOHUNT linked to this post and that started a good bit of a discussion.
Blogged at Gray Hill Harbor Offices in Seattle using Windows Live Writer
I love all the torrent sites, the more sites the harder they are to track and shut down. Anyways I support all torrent sites and respect the people who run them.
But if you want a really wicked search tool try Torrent Harvester http://torrentharvester.awardspace.com/
It can search 80+ sites, and can even search password protected sites using your cookies. This program Rocks.
--
Mr.Nick
Posted by: Mr. Nick | 14 December 2006 at 12:44
Wow, this post has had over 6,000 hits - but only one comment!
Posted by: Jim Benson | 21 December 2006 at 17:34
If you use the Advanced search with torrentz.com you get 41 results, not 2. http://www.torrentz.com/search?x=27&y=23&q=Numan&advanced=true
Posted by: Flippy31337 | 23 December 2006 at 10:08
Flippy,
Sure enough you do! In the main search you also now get 7 hits on Numan.
My question is ... why make people go through the bother of clicking the "advanced" box when it's just a checkbox. It's not like the advanced features had a lot of variables I could set.
From a user interaction perspective, I can't see much of a use for hiding a deeper user experience like that.
Posted by: Jim Benson | 24 December 2006 at 02:57
hey guys lets all just get wat we can wen we can ..lmao
Posted by: glen | 29 December 2006 at 09:53
ScrapeTorrent.com just returned 72 results for "Numan"...
http://www.scrape3.dreamhosters.com/Results/index.php?search=Numan&ft=basic&season=&episode=&rt=&sort=seed&rd=&fz=&pf=
Posted by: Justin | 02 January 2007 at 10:14
Thanks Justin,
One of the counterweights for number of hits is the value of the hits. Does ScrapeTorrent provide tools to filter out spam torrents?
Posted by: Jim Benson | 02 January 2007 at 10:42
ISOhunt is without a doubt the best torrent search site around at the moment
Posted by: Paul` | 13 January 2007 at 09:06
too bad isohunt left out comments unlike torrentspy, it helps choosing the right torrent and make it work
Posted by: dain | 15 January 2007 at 05:45
Dain,
When you use torrentspy, do you always, sometimes, rarely or never leave comments? Is the torrentspy community diligent in their commenting?
Posted by: Jim Benson | 15 January 2007 at 12:19
How can Torrent Scan turn up 7 hits and isoHunt 84 if Torrent Scan searches isoHunt? LOL very neutral article.. ;-p
Posted by: Mavol | 31 January 2007 at 10:28
Mavol,
True enough, Torrent Scan nests the 17 sites you can scan with it in a frame and you individually have to go to each site.
TorrentScan really isn't a search engine, it's a portal to several search engines. So TorrentScan doesn't search IsoHunt, it merely calls it up.
However, even though TorrentScan does allow you to go to each, it is still meaningful to know which ones offer better results. Otherwise you'd just have to go down the list.
Posted by: Jim Benson | 31 January 2007 at 12:02
DEMONOID.COM
Posted by: JoeMomma | 02 February 2007 at 01:48
Don't you hate it when people just leave comments like that with no supporting text?
Demonoid appears to be a central storage area for torrents, assumably to aid seeding. If this is wrong, someone let me know. If this is right, they aren't long for this world - this is easy pickings for the RIAA and MPAA.
Posted by: Jim Benson | 02 February 2007 at 10:57
I'm sorry Jim if I came off 'somewhat rudely' it was not my intention. I was merely trying to enlight the humoristic side of the mistake (why I added the smilie; I always try to look at the bright side of life).
I would also like to point out that, as a regular visitor of Torrent Scan, the popup has a limit of 1 pop every 48 hours (or maybe even more). I get the feeling this was not taken into account when commenting on the popup. Furthermore I'd like to say that there hasn't been a popup on the site for over a month now, so it's not really up-to-date. ;-)
PS. The 'advantages for torrent site admins' here: http://torrentscan.com/about.php is an intresting read on the value of Torrent Scan.
Posted by: Mavol | 03 February 2007 at 11:05
Mavol,
Thanks! I really appreciate it when commenters come back to check on the replies and keep the conversation going.
Yeah, this post has been sitting here for a while. So it some of it might be a bit out of date.
I did go back and edit the original post when you wrote though. I've meant to do a deeper dive into the various torrent search engines and the portals that either use their search engine or that lead to them. When I do, I'll certainly put the link for that here.
Posted by: Jim Benson | 03 February 2007 at 20:38
Well, I just did a search for Numan using torrent harvester and it turned up 1301 results and that's excluding 1130 results which did not match Numan in the title.
Torrent Harvester has to be the best option for torrent searching as it can search over 170 sites and beats torrent search hands down. I dont use anything else nowadays.
Posted by: stimpak | 16 February 2007 at 03:10
Spy Sweeper warns that Torrent Search from openwares.org puts advertising on your computer. Beware.
Posted by: Nick Nack | 27 April 2007 at 21:12