BitDig 
BlogTorrents
FlixFlux
Morrent.com
ScrapeTorrent
Toorgle
TorrentKing
TorrentPond
TorrentScan
TorrentScoop
Torrents!
Torrents.to
TorrentTyphoon
Torrent-Finder
Torrentini
Torrentz.com
Zoozle.org
OUR PICKS
A torrent metasearch website sends user requests (queries) to other torrent websites and shows the results from all of them simultaneously. The premise works like this: just enter a keyword in the search field and it will query all of the torrent website sources and display the aggregated results. Sounds too good to be true? Think you’ve found the Holy Grail of torrents? Maybe. Maybe not. While proper torrent metasearching is great at searching for hard-to-find torrents, it is not something utilized by experienced BitTorrent users. The problems arise because of the lack of information provided by the metasearch. While great at providing aggregated data with loads of results, the specific details of the torrent are often sacrificed (and you’ll still have to visit the source website anyways to get the torrent, in most cases).
Another drawback to torrent metasearching is the lack of real-time results in the searches (of some sites). In the example below, at www.torrentastic.com, we searched for the movie Atonement - a brand-new DVD release on the P2P scene - found Dec. 23 on ThePirateBay.org. The torrentastic search was conducted on Dec. 26th - but the results are only updated to Dec. 7th at the latest, and doesn’t include this “DvDRip” version. Clearly not a great example of how to find newly-released torrents.
Additionally, not all metasearch websites work in this same manner. Some will actually connect to the hosting websites and produce results directly from them - and show the source website in the browser. Whether or not the actual data is accurately delivered from the source is contentious - and varies from one to another. Be careful about how serious you trust the results to be. Not all torrent metasearchers display the correct information (see TorrentPond below).
A list of metasearching torrent sites.
BitDig.com is a refreshing look at BitTorrent metasearching done right! There’s a ‘recent torrent’ page updated in real time so users can see incoming torrents. Neat! Caveats: Watch out for the “Direct Download” link next to listed torrents - this is a scam. Hosts ‘Azureus Magnet Links’ for easy downloading - no external site required.
BlogTorrents.com is a brand new website offering constantly updated torrent file downloads found in Internet Blogs. They filter for torrent files inside of rss, rdf and atom file enclosures (Blog Feeds).
FlixFlux is a great site - not only as a torrent metasearch site, but as a general movie site, too. Has freshly updated content and movie categories such as current box office charts and DVD rental charts - it’s like IMDb.com with torrent links! To quote Wikipedia:
The search feature is unique in that it not only provides details of available torrents, but also provides information about the film being searched for, such as genre, rating and plot information. FlixFlux also contains embedded movie trailers, making it possible to watch a trailer before downloading the actual torrents.”
Morrent.com is a
little different (in a good way). Unseen anywhere else, it offers the
ability to do advanced searching in regards to the restricting the
number of seeds or leeches (peers) returned in a search result. For
instance, if you want to find “Beowulf” but you don’t want all the junk
results (i.e. only 2 seeds), click on the ‘Advanced’ tab at Morrent.com
and enter a minimum number of seeds. It will only show results given for
at least that many seeds, all other results are thrown out. A
fabulous tool for filtering out the crap torrents. Another key feature
of Morrent is it’s search cloud - see what people are searching for and
what’s popular! NOTE: We found that some of the links it points to
not to be working, especially less-popular ones.
A clean and intuitive torrent search engine site that combines all the major torrent search sites into a single page of search results.” - Scrapetorrent.com
Scrapetorrent is great for finding
results from eight popular public BitTorrent sites, and generating the
results from all - on one webpage. Users can filter out the zero
seeders and duplicate results - before the querying begins.
Additionally, search results can be sorted by file size, date, seeds and
name - handy features for judging what could be a decoy or scam.
Our notes: While most experienced BitTorrent users probably won’t use Scrapetorrent exclusively - heck, we now need extended information on the torrents that only the hosting websites can divulge (individual torrent user comments, files included in the torrent, real-time seed/peer ratios, newly released torrents, etc.). That said, Scrapetorrent can be useful when searching for really specific files - this can save the time of having to visit each one directly. And we like the fact that we don’t have to click on individual torrent sites in the metasearch site - all are displayed on one page.
Toorgle is a torrent metasearch based on the
Google search engine! It’s a Google-search that’s been specially
modified to show only .torrent files in the results, and the .torrent
files can be downloaded right from the listed results in 2 clicks. It’s
just like using Google to search for a torrent - but without all the
other irrelevant crap that comes back with it! You can even add
“Toorgle” to your available search engines in Firefox. There are other
google-style torrent sites such as http://torrents.nu/ and http://bitoogle.com/ that
employ a similar method of searching.
TorrentPond allows you to search all
the major torrent search engines in one place (so far it has 22 listed
torrent sites to choose from).
Our notes: In our tests, we had some difficulty with TorrentPond. When searching for “atonement”, we selected BushTorrent as the site to search, and it came back with zero results. OK, so we manually loaded the BushTorrent website, and opted to search for it ourselves. Low and behold - what did we find? Lots of results for “atonement” that didn’t show up in the TorrentPond search. Hmm…see our proof below.
This TorrentPond error wasn’t limited to just BushTorrent, either. The ‘MegaNova’ link (which is actually www.seedpeer.com) also incorrectly displayed zero results, as well did the ‘Torrentz’ link, the ‘Torrent Box’ link, ‘BiteNova’ and ‘Torrent Valley’. All were dead wrong.
In conclusion, at least six of its 22 links display erroneous search results. A torrent metasearch site is only a good thing if it works correctly.
TorrentScan is a true metasearch
tool that shows eleven of the most popular torrent websites all on one
page. Users need only to enter a keyword in the search field, and click
any of the listed torrent sites to see the results from each one
separately.
Our Comments: This is how torrent metasearching should be done! We like TorrentScan because it actually loads the instance of the originating website in the browser. So if you click “Isohunt”, www.isohunt.com is actually shown. We found no discrepancies in the results - what is listed through TorrentScan is exactly the same as visiting the hosting website. A true metasearcher. TorrentPond, take note!
Torrentscoop is a torrent search engine powered by Google. It is also one of the best indexers around. If the results say there are no torrents, it usually means that there aren’t any torrents available to download.
Torrents! uses a Yahoo-style approach to torrent searching. At last check this site wasn’t finding any results for any searches.
Torrents.to has taken a slightly
different approach to metasearching. It contains a small toolbar at the
top of the browser - just enter a search term and click on the links at
the top. This will ‘open’ the individual site with the results shown -
complete with all the torrent information and whatnot that is listed by
the hosted torrent site. What a great alternative to using that stupid
“Torrent Search Bar” thingy that’s floating around. Torrents.to contains
all the major torrent sites as well. Bravo!
We had some issues with
TorrentTyphoon - it kept “timing out” in the search operations - and
thus some results weren’t shown. In order to use the ‘advanced’ search
(to kill the timeout errors) users need to create an account and login.
We find this to be needless and more trouble than it’s worth - the less
people know, the better. Furthermore, we’re not even sure which
torrent sites it uses in the searches, but we suspect it’s just these
four - mininova, torrentbox, thepiratebay and torrentspy.
Torrent-finder is another good metasearch site. It’s a BitTorrent multi search engine which searches 185 torrent sites and trackers from one page. We recommend that you change the settings to allow only a few results per page, or you may have problems (see image below). Alternatively, you can deselect some of the sites from appearing in the results.
Also available is a “TorrentFinder Toolbar” for Firefox.
Torrentini.com
Not terribly impressed with this torrent metasearch. In our search of “Atonement” it didn’t show any results pertaining to the movie, whatsoever (no CAMs, no DVDs). Results have absolutely no information about the torrents at all - no date added, no seed/peer listings. And the worst thing of all is that most of the actual links don’t work or are dead - you’ll end up being redirected to a mainpage instead. Wouldn’t this just be easier to do in the first place? With Torrentini, you’ll swear the MPAA is behind this one - attempting to frustrate users into giving up on their searches.
To quote the Torrentz website, “Search through dozens of torrent websites and millions of web pages from one simple, fast and convenient interface. Identical torrents across websites are grouped together. Links and statistics are always accurate and up-to-date.”
Our Notes: Statistics are not
completely up-to-date. In our search for “atonement” on Dec. 26th, we
notice that the newest torrent listed is at least 5 days old (see
screenshot) - it doesn’t even list the most popular one from Dec. 23 -
the FxM official release. Through this we can easily deduce that
Torrentz doesn’t do any real-time searching - it uses a database of
torrents that was compiled at an earlier date.
Zoozle is not primarily a torrent
metasearch engine, it’s categorized as a P2P search engine. As a tool
for torrent searching, it needs some work. Results are not well
organized (with no extra data such as seed/peer ratios or file sizes)
however it does have current listings - with good working links. The
resultant queries aren’t derived from the popular main torrent sites
(mininova, isohunt, thepiratebay and btjunkie) but from others including
fenopy, torrentvalley, slotorrent and torrentportal - all good torrent
sites.
Honorable mention goes to…
TorrentKing - the name
says it all! While TorrentKing doesn’t search for torrents, we
still can’t say enough positive things about this site! TorrentKing has
the largest index of torrent websites (trackers) on the ‘Net. Period.
The TK trackers/sites can be categorized by genre of torrents (i.e.
sports/movies/adult, etc.) so if you’re into some seriously specialized
torrents, you’ll be able to find a site that hosts ‘em. They even list
the IRC channels associated with the trackers, as well (in case you feel
like joining the channel of a private tracker and try to suck up to them
for registration info!).
Hankering to find the newest torrent hosting websites that have recently opened up, but have no idea where to start looking? They list those, too! Check out their “Latest” link - you’ll find all the newest Bit sites on the Internet, with corresponding launch dates.
TK is the site to visit for any hardcore BitTorrent aficionado.
N3w M0nk Says:
http://www.utoogle.co.nr
UToogle is a true metasearch engine that shows live, fast search results out of the most popular torrent websites all on one page. Also, features some usefull information.
Users need only to enter a keyword in the search field, and click on ‘Search button to start searching. Users can also select which torrent engines to search.
Search results are nicely categorized to save time.
Must try out once before reaching any decision.
http://www.utoogle.co.nr
Cheers
grt Says:
nice compilation of metasearch sites, even though I don’t really agree with your ratings. Torrentz.com might not search the torrent sites in real-time, but they still display good results + lists additional trackers that aren’t present in the actual torrent file.
Another metasearch site that I find to be the best actually (and which does the searches in real-time) is http://btdig.com . You might want to check it out
bolzano_1989 Says:
Exactly , according to whois.domaintools , IP Location of torrentini.com is the same as the one of miivi.com - a ‘fake’ site of MPAA’s Media Defender to catch pirates : Arizona - Scottsdale - Godaddy.com Inc .
http://whois.domaintools.com/miivi.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/torrentini.com
sharky Says:
The information from those two WHOIS doesn’t provide any information as to a “connection” between the two sites, it just shows they’re both protected by DomainControl - as is almost 7 million other websites.
nickel22 Says:
nice list, thanks
but torrentking is based on google cse, so if u want check against zeta torrent
bye
http://zeta.torrent.googlepages.com
Frederick Says:
Let’s not forget about the new, real-time TorrentZEN search engine:
http://TorrentZEN.com/
Torrent Moon Says:
I prefer using http://TorrentMoon.com. No ads!
leny Says:
I found http://torrent-finder.appspot.com torrent search engine, which searches multiple torrent sites, and shows all the results in one table.
It’s based on Google AppEngine, and I think the torrent search has been never so easy.
http://torrent-finder.appspot.com