TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

Nerrot – The World’s Most Minimal Torrent Site

As BitTorrent sites have developed over the years, many have added a plethora of features to enhance the user experience. A brand new torrent site called Nerrot, which officially launches its beta today, takes completely the opposite approach.

nerrotGoogle’s homepage has always been known for its minimalist presentation and the lack of distractions has proven a hit with users. Earlier this month Google turned on a new fade-in effect, which meant that until the user’s mouse was moved, everything except the logo, search field and two buttons beneath it remained hidden.

Nerrot, a new torrent site launching today in early beta, somehow manages to make even Google look cluttered. Nicholas, the programmer behind Nerrot, told TorrentFreak that his motto is “Simply, simplify, simplistically!” This philosophy is evident in the site’s interface and operation.

Nerrot bills itself as an “instant torrent downloader” and is very easy to use. Simply type in the name of the material you’re looking for as accurately as possible into the search field and the appropriate torrent is immediately delivered.

Behind the scenes, Nerrot does all the boring stuff automatically. The torrent file it delivers to you aims to be the most relevant to your search and should also be one that connect you to the healthiest available swarm. In TorrentFreak’s tests Nerrot delivered on its promises most of the time.

Nicholas told us that the site is currently in “0.5 beta” and new features such as filtering results based on the amount of seeds or leeches, an XML or database-driven auto-complete, and an option to select which trackers Nerrot should search for torrents. These will be realized with “…juicy javascript, modals and ajax goodness,” and will remain optional and hidden.

Although Nerrot is quite good at picking the right torrents, some users might feel like they are no longer in control when the torrent files are served automatically. In some cases this might even lead to downloading ‘fake’ torrents as the site offers no option to check for comments or inflated peer ratios. Tread with caution.

Update: The sites has returned after several months of downtime.

Related Posts

Previous Post | Next Post

  • gosh

    Seems like a nice idea, however I think fake/badly seeded torrents will ruin it somewhat.

  • theo

    This is not a good idea. Fake torrents and malware will show up before legitimate ones.

  • Magma

    This will be corrupted soon by fake files plus viruses and low speeds.

  • kabuki0009

    just type words like music or video or such like and see what comes up ^.~

  • Kapcha

    This is good idea, i hate advertisement. Sure there are some negative sides, but i think this is good idea anyway.

  • StuartDuff

    Don’t like the way it serves you a torrent without choice and researching if it is indeed the correct version?

    I am all for simple but this could be a step too far especially with a high potential to send you a fake torrent. Mininova couldn’t filter out copyrighted content so I’m pretty sure this system wont be able to effectively filter out fakes and other shady torrents.

    Always nice to see people contributing to the bittorrent community but this one needs more thought and direction.

  • Pirated.me

    Great idea, however it does need more functions in the long run. I’m sure they’ll find ways to keep from providing fake content, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I’m more worried about when I search for an artist, and I want a list of all their albums. This may be great for finding stuff you already know about, but it won’t feel right to most torrent users who are used to seeing tag clouds, advanced search options, and detailed seed / leech stats.

    My suggestion is to have 2 home-pages available in the future. Under the search box place 2 links, [Go Small] – [Go Big], with the ‘go big’ option allowing users to search by artists and such, and return results in list form. With the many API’s available out there, it shouldn’t take too much time and effort to add it on, and may increase returning users.

    Then again, just my suggestion :-)

  • jimmy

    sounds like fail to me.

    I definitely want to be able to check what torrents are offered and select them by MY OWN criteria.

    A fail machine that pushes the next best guess on my PC and hides any other crucial information is definitively only good for Lusers that have no idea about what they are doing in the first place and will end up with any malware available anyhow.

  • Hangman

    We didn’t need this at all. Useless.

  • Pingback: Nerrot – kitokia torrent paieška · Radiocool.lt

  • Unsure

    Really like the idea.I think to find torrents accurately Nerrot will need to put in ways to include and exclude words

    I was testing it and typed mint 8. It downloaded linux mint 8 64 bit. Which is good but I could not figure out how to download 32 bit.

    Can’t wait till the full official release.

  • lol

    What a crap site. May get a few dozen visitors.

  • Wyvern

    Judging from the comments here, looks like few have actually tried it.

    Think about how you’d sort out stuff like fakes and bad seeds. You seriously telling me a computer algorithm can’t handle that?

    Shit, i’d better stop flying too.

    Juz sayin.

  • kk

    I want to be able to browse and choose. I also want to see the comments. This is a very bad idea.

  • Borderliner

    For something in beta state that basically just tests an idea the site is great. No reason to think that it’s all that’s going to be.
    If they manage to keep ads away I have no problem with such minimal design.

  • anon

    tooooooooo simple. not interested.

  • TxRx

    I tried it. It should be called torrent roulette, because it is the equivalent of hitting “I’m feeling lucky” on the Google homepage. Might work fine for undiscerning torrent users, but it is destined to fail for people that like to pick details about their files (quality, source, tracker, etc.).

  • Wesley

    It would be like to have a result list at least. Google has the “I’m feeling lucky” button that does a similar function but I never used it.

  • knux

    Step right up and play your hand at Torrent Roulette, 1 in 6 chance to get a virus, 2 in 6 chance that it is fake and a 3 in 6 chance that the torrent is good. Step right up and take your chance.

  • AlienDK

    Just tried it. Its awesome!

  • *D

    as a test: I typed “avatar” and got a random anime torrent and just to see
    what happens typed “axxo” and got 1 random torrent again
    Needs more work :)

  • AlienDK

    Btw do NOT use this site via https. It will lead you to Jenple.com.

  • Aredt

    New but way too stupid for obvious reasons. Its like having Google with only “I’m feeling lucky” button which I remember I have never used.

  • AlienDK

    @ 20 Aredt
    Try to be more specific. Try with ” axxo”. Works great. Try typing in Iron Man axxo. That will give you the axxo release of Iron Man, tried it myself. Prolly works for most releases.

  • AlienDK

    OOps.. I meant “@ 20 *D” :P

  • Any Guy

    Not a well thought out idea at all. Where is it pulling the torrents from? What sites does it querey? Its own dodgy index full of malware?

    You cant trust it :/

  • hmm

    “lthough Nerrot is quite good at picking the right torrents,”

    Id defiantly disagree with this…

    Very awesome idea though… ill check back later some day to see if its been improved.

  • Anonymous

    Better off using a site like http://www.torrentfly.org there you can pick which one you want to download.

  • Anonymous

    I type Kara (Korean band) I got “PornCan”. Not what I was looking for, probably also filled with malware. The makers didn’t think this through at all.

  • mustangx

    A novel idea I think, would be much better to have the .torrents pulled from a list of trusted sites where theres a minimal amount of fakes and decent amount of material to search through. As one user stated above it’s to similar to Russian Roulette as it is now.

  • emilio

    too minimalistic for me, typed ‘the killers’ and day and age came out, not royal’s so…they need to put a damn list there

  • diarRIAA

    I’m afraid I must agree with the “Fail” bunch.

    There is way too much room for abuse. Fake torrents, malware, RIAA/MPAA tainted torrents, etc. The site seems to forget the reason why we enjoy being pirates; we like to make our own choices, and we like sharing our experiences and feedback with others on not just the content but the quality. How are you to know if the 4.27 gb compressed Bluray rip is real, or if the movie is good and worth downloading?

    The site takes away our choices.

  • dipstick

    Useless. I tested “Californication S03E04 720″ and it found nothing. OTOH, on torrentz.com I got a perfect response i.e. the HD version.

  • lone

    its crap actually. i dont get any choice thats not good

  • chaku

    you will have to type exactly what you want

    doesnt really help much …

  • hmm

    great idea???? get a grip.
    the whole ideal of torrents is having some idea of what you are downloading before you do, via comments etc. This site does away with everything thats useful to avoid fakes. Stupid.

  • dood

    The Nerrot torrent site share be uper then smell. The Fan’s would buy more
    If uper then smell people would by more hot dogs.

  • WSI

    @5 & 14

    If you don’t like Ads, use ABP.

  • Anon

    Type in Heroes seasons 1-3 …. and see this:

    http://www.nerrot.com/torrentnotfound.png

    Hilarious !

  • Sam

    Nice, and it seems to be able to find good torrents, but still, I like the normal way.

  • Anonymous

    why isnt his motto just ‘simple’?

  • Anonymous

    an idea just as nobel as Alfred Nobel’s atom bomb. Will deliver a lot of fakes, malware and kiddy p02n and maybe they are already giving info to mafiaa pushed torrents :P

    And talking about minimalistic, I heard js, ajax duh! that’s not minimalistic or efficient. Dude you really picked wrong direction!

  • diarRIAA

    @ 36 Dec 19, 2009 at 20:34 by dood

    I have absolutely no idea what the heck you’re trying to say.

  • Dark Logic

    @ 38
    take the s off seasons
    its a good idea for newbies to bittorent dont knock it its in beta 0.5

  • Drake3

    I don’t like the idea myself. I think they should have an option to see other results and whatnot as I much prefer spending an extra 5 to 15 minutes finding the right torrent, rather than find out after 8 hours of downloading.

    However, I did try it with three control torrent searches I have done on other sites. Surprisingly, it served me exactly what I had chosen (using other site’s searches) two out of the three times and the time it gave me a different one, it was just as good. I still bet it got lucky though.

  • Pirate

    Pirates can’t afford ajax.

    Proxies usually don’t allow scripts so as to not compromise ones identity.

  • lol

    Look at the noobs talking about how fake files are going to show up. Hahaha yeah because you don’t get those on thepiratebay or torrentz.com no fake files are everywhere on public sites, if your gunna bitch about one bitch about them all…….

  • diarRIAA

    Yes. I’m a noob. I’ve only been programming computers for nearly 30 years, so I really have no clue how anything works or what a fake file is.

    Now…where do I find the ANY key? xD

  • Brandon

    I don’t like it. Lets Play Torrent Roulette… See what we have d/led in the end…

  • Me

    I tried simply “movie” and it indeed offered me a movie. Some Hannah Montana flick.
    *shudder*

    Oh, how I long for the day when computer will be able read directly from my mind what I want. Even if I’m myself not so sure about it…

  • BIOS HazarD

    I am most unimpressed.

    Cute idea, but the purpose of a search is to find the best version of whatever you are looking for. Its like going to google and hitting “Im feeling lucky”…

    You are not feeling lucky. Ever.
    Again, cute idea, doesn’t work for me at all (yet).

  • fubar

    i allso tried movies and it gave me hannah montana then i tried axxo and it gave me only twillight

    BIG FAIL

  • Mission

    Nice to see someone try something a little different instead of another “me too” site.

    It needs work but the article does say its a 0.5 beta, plenty time for improvements

  • ET

    got to say i am unimpressed also. relies to much on the staff. and generic terms aka xvid bring up rubbish.

  • Dataschmuck

    Just thought I’d point out that Nerrot spelled backwards is torren. I guess Tnerrot would be too hard to pronounce, thus deviating from the simple theme.

  • Bodge

    To all of you typing in “axxo” or “movie” why on earth would you do this in the first place? If you want an axxo release, just type the name and axxo. “movie” is just plain dumb of a search, of course its not going to give you anything you want.

    I’d say this works extremely well for movies and music, as its less likely to get a virus or some malware. Testing it so far has returned 90% of what I was looking for, so I don’t see what the issue is.

  • jamie

    theres no way to tell if the torrent is fake or has a virus.

  • Simon

    There is definitely potential for this site.

  • Bodge

    @55

    When have you ever gotten a virus from a movie? Or an album? It picks from the healthiest swarm, according to the article, so one would hope that fakes wouldn’t be high up on the charts.

    I recommend using it for a few days when grabbing a movie or music, and I’m sure it will grow on you.

    When it comes to software…I’d still be very wary about using it.

    I did finally find a good version of nod32 64bit from it though…

  • FartingBob

    @50: You typed in “movie” and got a highly seeded movie. You typed in “Axxo” and got a highly seeded Axxo release. What more did you want from such vague search terms? Dids you want it to read your mind and know what type of movie you were looking for, or what you dislike?
    No, it bases its results clearly on seeds/peers first.

  • Rekrul

    I typed in the name of a movie that I’ve been looking for. The torrent it sent me had plenty of peersand it started downloading at aroun 150K/s. Of course it had absolutley no seeds, so after a while, everything stopped and we were all stuck.

    Yeah, works great…

  • givvum time

    Looks brilliant to me. Nothing for the MAFIAA to sink its fangs into. If they build a reputation for only high quality torrents then what would you think? Wherever they are, they can take the time to select the best to keep this quirky community happy Will wait and see…givvum time.

  • dood

    @ 42 , it was very clearly worded

  • mudisoft

    isn’t this kinda useless, keeping in mind that choosing the correct and newest torrent is always key in these things?

  • shawners

    Very useless.. You put Avatar in it and the movie itself doesnt show up even though their are cams.. It doesnt give you a list of torrents that match what you search and your basically pulling air out of the sky trying to grab something tangible. Ill stick to newsgroups, and private torrent sites.. I Know what is being posted as byte rate, scene group, and quality.. And i know who im sharing among, 60,000 peeps rather then 2 million peeps who may be connected to the MPAA Mafia.

  • Bodge

    @63

    Try explaining that to your parents? Hell, even your girlfriend?

    This is a wonderful site to jump into the torrent world.

  • meh

    I dont like it. How will you know what you are downloading? It could be a virus named after the movie you want.

  • thomas P

    @62 The canadians share be uper then smell. If the at then true it would be okay.

  • icc4p

    it not the bad instant torrrent dowloader

  • dsfdsfs

    site kinda sucks can’t find anything normal

  • Anonymous

    lol fuck all the haters most of u havent even given it a chance. ive searched a couple of things and like what ive found so far

  • ?!?

    just tried it and it seems not too bad to me…
    keep in mind it’s still a release in progress…;)
    by the way i was looking for avatar and it did find the “best” result…

  • ?!?

    it’s actually the only one who found the avatar dvdscr,when all the other sites (rlslog,zerosec,scenerls,etc…)only had the telesync;)

  • thomas P

    lol @ 70 , what other sites can you find fake torrents on?

  • vadim s. sabinich
  • anonymous

    ok, i tried “Avatar” and got “Avatar: The Last Airbender” … fuck off NOBROT or whatever LOL

  • deadtwice

    pr piece

  • opbR

    I hate it >:(

  • Chaos

    @8
    I am so with you! The site sounds like some chaos for sure!? I will not be going there any time soon!! I will just stay with my old sites for sure!!!

  • Dia

    How many even knew about the fade in effect? Not me, because I use the firefox plugin to search google. Why would someone use nerrot instead of a plugin for some good site?

  • NMR

    Jeez, all you haters, try get into you brains that this site its not for the avage torrentfreak reader/user.
    try you biggest newb friend / family

  • shawners

    @72.. There is no AVATAR SCREENER!!! Everything will be mislabeled and other results wont show up, even the most relevant. Site will go down as the most useless site of the 21 century.

  • samantha

    silly idea

  • gabriel

    you gotta me kidding me

  • daz

    jesus christ some supposed “intellectuals” here have shown their idiocy. This is NOT a torrent site replacement, but a quick way to get common files. I want to watch a standard version of “i love you man” I type in “i love you man” it gives it to me. If what your after is something obscure, this is NOT for you. If your after specifics, this is NOT for you. If like me you just wanna watch a film fast without filtering through various subbed crap, this is perfect. Get some perspective in your views please.

  • Not tellin

    The search thing pisses me off.

    If you put something in and it doesn’t find it, it comes up with a picture of a baby and says:

    ‘omg stop crying’

    please… gimme a break.

  • sh00per

    it works for me

    if it doesn’t work for you, go somewhere else

    it’s that simple

  • hmm

    its a pile of crap

    its that simple

  • Ebumboo

    No. Simple is good. But, this is random.

  • mudisoft

    @65
    yeah, I’ll just tell them:

    “If you wanna watch Love Happens, put that into the search and if you want good quality, please put R5 (and not DVDRip because it is teh best rlz). Since you don’t want web shit and stuff you should put “DEViSE” in the end, because you know they do good rlzs”

  • anon

    tried it – terrible idea.

  • lverona

    If “Grab” replaced with search and after hitting it I will be presented with a minimalistic list of available torrents, where they are from, leechers, seeders and number of downloads – the it will get useful.

    For now – funny, but not serious.

  • Raideo

    Rather than talk out my ass before looking into it, I actually got a few cd’s off of it, and at least for those three it worked quite well.

  • Nutman

    100% useless service. As with most of these pointless things, it will disappear quickly.

  • Ninja

    The idea is nice but I’d go for a Google like interface that points the origin and lists important info from the torrent.

    Let us see how it evolves b4 criticizing ;D

  • MD3

    It’s a “just for fun” search engine.

    Useless for now.

  • Gripweed

    @58

    I didn’t think you could get a virus from a movie either until I tried Nerrot and searched on “Last Station”.
    NOD32 didn’t catch it but MSE did. TrojanDownloader:ASX/Wimad.CN in \The Last Station (2009) DVDRip XviD.[eng].ViSiON\The Last Station (2009) DVDRip XviD.[eng].ViSiON.avi->(ASF_Script_Commands)

  • joe

    i like it and i especially love the torrent not found page:http://www.nerrot.com/torrent.php

  • existor

    Not for me thank you. Without info on a torrent,including any comments, it is “pot luck” what you get. For general search purposes I use TorrentZ these days.

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | Key To Eden

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | The Everything Forums Blog

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] · TechBlogger

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is The Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use | Lifehacker Australia

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | TechBlogs Today

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use :webinfinite.com

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | Reviews Manual

  • specialguest

    This is a gimmick-

    It only serves to explore the boundaries of what is possible. Who could honestly benefit from such a thing?

    Anyone that needs or wants something this simple would surely be daunted or bothered by the whole process of torrenting in the first place!

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | Geek News and Musings

  • Pingback: Google-nya torrent | Channel-ID

  • Tasaio

    For you people who say that this site is for beginners, you do realize that they will just download whatever they get? Teaching them how to search properly is just as much work as teaching them how to use a proper torrent side.

    That said, the site is nice and clean. But as everyone else says, it’s way too simple and need quite a bit of work to actually be useable.

  • Bay Pirate

    Even if we discount the risk of fakes, the lack of descriptions and comments, etc. it makes no sense as a search service: it picks whatever it wants of many possible results for your keyword and if you want something else you are out of luck.
    For instance, I typed the title of a TV series and it decided to serve a (purported) torrent of season 1: what if I want season 2?

  • Eran

    Registrant is “Moniker Privacy Services”. Sounds like a domain proxy.

    “However, Monte Cahn, the CEO of Moniker.com, told silicon.com Moniker Privacy Services does not actually operate the sites but is simply the default registrant for its customers who, for whatever reason, want to operate anonymously.”
    From a silicon.com article about spammers operating from Moniker domains.

    I don’t like it, why would a torrent search engine be registered under a proxy? This could be mediadefender\similar. Do not want

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] « Coolbeans

  • Pingback: Nerrot, buscador de torrents minimalista | Bitelia

  • King Kong

    The site is useless:

    - you can’t browse
    - you can’t select between torrents
    - you can’t read comments
    - you must know exactly the torrent name (considering how long these things are at times, you’ve got to be nuts!
    - your at the mercy of nerrot, you have absolute no control

    This is not even a good idea.

  • Pingback: Nerrot Is the Simplest, Least Spammy Torrent Site You’ll Ever Use [BitTorrent] | Computer Tips and Tricks

  • Pingback: Nerrot, buscador de torrents

  • NaVi Girl

    This site has huge potential. The owner of this site knows the first thing that appear is fake file. This is his first priority. filtering out the fake and the real one. No website or search engine is complete without error, virus, malware, or corruption in mind.

    Since this is only a beta version. Future version will correct the problem as time goes by. It’s too early to judge this site.

    It is true that there will be a lot of virus, malware and fake file, but in the future. These will be corrected as newer version is released.

    Or the developer could just release the API and let other developer built filtering option around it. Sorta like AVG safe search in Google. Someone could potentially develop a script that allow people to rank fake file vs real file.

  • Paradie

    So simple.

  • Pingback: Nerrot, buscador de torrents minimalista | GeekWe

  • pepper

    just used it and got a fake torrent

  • Rob

    it sux

  • Pingback: Descargar torrents gratis y minimalista, con Nerrot - TechTear

  • Pingback: Descargar torrents gratis y minimalista, con Nerrot

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

NewsBits

Even more news...

  • Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm on Freedom of Speech

    Freedom of speech is a highly valued commodity, but should people be allowed to say whatever...

  • Blu-ray Anti-Piracy Tech Stops Discs and Promotes Purchases

    An anti-piracy system present in all official Blu-ray players since 2012 has received a fresh update...

  • Foxtel Breeds Pirates by Locking Up Game of Thrones

    One of the main reasons why people turn to piracy is the lack of legal alternatives....

  • UK Student Admits Breaching Sony Copyrights With Leak of PS3 SDK

    Last year an Internet user known as El Nomeo leaked version 3.70 of Sony’s Playstation3 SDK...

  • Pirates Can Be Identified Despite Sharing IP Addresses, ISP Claims

    Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation is a network mechanism through which many Internet subscribers can share the...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

CopyQuote

Left Quote

“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.

Peter Sunde Left Quote

PopularArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.