Real-Time BitTorrent Search Engines Expand
Written by Ernesto on October 11, 2008‘Real-Time’ BitTorrent search engines are the trend of 2008, and new sites emerge every other week. It all started in January with the launch of YouTorrent, but soon after it went legal, other sites took over. We catch up with the founder of one of YouTorrent’s successors to find out more.
The “real-time” search approach YouTorrent introduced appealed to many users, and it is no surprise that most of the new meta-search engines that were inspired by it have been growing steadily. PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents serve hundreds of thousands of searches a day, and newcomers such as TorrentFly and the more basic looking Gpirate (not real-time) are picking up steam as well.
In March, we mentioned both PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents in our top 10 YouTorrent (meta-search) alternatives. Since then, a lot of things have changed, both in design and feature-wise. We decided to catch up with Godius, the founder of NowTorrents, to find out what’s happened since Spring.
“We recently re-coded and designed the whole website,” Godius told us. “The new site has a more user friendly layout and has a bunch of new features. For example it’s now possible to filter site-by-site results, filter keyword and categories, all in real-time. We also build a popular searches caching system, this has greatly improved loading times. And we added more personal search preference settings.”
One of the new features at NowTorrents (and Gpirate) is the BoxOffice listings. The MPAA probably won’t be too happy with such a feature, but the users love it according to Godius.
“We are planning to expand the BoxOffice torrents feature with a latest Games and Music Albums charts section. We have noticed that users greatly appreciate the BoxOffice section, so we feel that adding games and music charts will satisfy their needs even more. Many people don’t know what to search for; they just want to download the latest stuff that has just been released.”
BoxOffice torrents at NowTorrents
Godius is not too worried about the MPAA showing up at his doorstep, as he told us: “Basically we are doing exactly what Google is doing only we do not list non-torrent related results. We feel as long as Google gets away with it, and the torrent sites we link to get away with it, we have nothing to worry about.”
One of the downsides of all these new meta-torrent search engines is that they all rely on a handful of BitTorrent trackers, and sites that actually host torrent files. Running a meta-search engine is easier, less costly, and probably safer from a legal point of view. Nevertheless, they become useless if there are no torrent files to index, or torrents to track.
Previously: TextBook Torrents Turns The Final Page and Closes Down
Next: Canadian Democrats are Pro BitTorrent and Against Throttling
38 Responses
FIRST!
I wonder, though, is it possible for there to be some kind of anti-MPAA gathering on such sites? I mean, assemble an army to declare war on the MPAA?
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/fs/ - File-sharing bulletin board
But last in intelligence…
Anyhoo, now torrents is decent but I see Gpirate does what nowtorrents does not…index Demonoid.
To me that is a major advantage.
(also it seems faster too)
@ #2
Demonoid will be added next week, its in the planning.
Gpirate isnt a real-time torrent search engine like NowTorrents. Gpirate actually stores all the results in it database, we fetch data in real-time so its always up-to-date. Gpirate does what torrentZ does.
That is excellent news! Demonoid is a must.
(now if you could get rid of the spammers/fakers that are Sumotorrent and replace them with IsoHunt…)
I see, that might explain the speed difference.
And what’s up with TorrentFly?
They seem to simply have copied your stuff but only changed a few colours around. Is it your site too?
@1
First your Mama for giving **** to everyone. got it ?
Make a constructive comment and not just to say First of Second.
@1
First your Mama for giving **** to everyone. got it ?
Make a constructive comment and not just to say First or Second.
Looks nice, I like it.
Bookmarked :f
The software used to run these sites(Pizza/Now) was it created inhouse or…?
Would appreciate some info there.
Thanks in advance!
all this sites are bullsh*t, host torrent files or go to sleep, bitch*s
what about IsoHunt ? isn’t it real-time too ?
All those search engines, and none of them have CBR files of Keith Giffen’s Trencher series… Takes the P out of DCP when a scan fades off the net…
Without precious trackers were screwed, we need a new way to get the torrents to one another instead of just websites.
filmgarbage.blogspot. com
@ #10
I cant say for pizza, but we custom coded the whole site from scratch.
@ #12
Isohunt is like torrentz, it does index torrent sites, but doesnt output data in real-time.
@Godius, will you be releasing your code to the open source community anytime soon?
Just curious.
Real time or not…I prefer uSniff..:)
my RULE is to download torrents only from sites that have their own trackers
e.g Demonoid, ThePirateBay.
@ 19, you can, just use a good search engine to find them… why search 1 site if you can seach 12?
Love http://www.torrentfly.com, prefer the layout to NowTorrents.com layout.
The thing that Torrentz has above the other’s mentioned here, is the verified download sign. Its a must to get around most fakes nowadays.
Its a minus that a youtube trailer link is not included in the links available in the boxoffice overview.
Bit Torrent sites totally rock. Keepin it Free.
http://www.privacy-center.ru.tc
*cough* bitsmash http://bitsmash.com *cough*
/okay done plugging own project hah
Who the fuck designed the logo for now torrents? Ooooooh a reflection effect. Way to be EVERY WEB 2.0 website ever.
That being said, I’m glad we have lots of options when it comes to torrent searching. Way to go now torrents.
Get a new logo though.
Oh and that “beta” thing on top is also very web2.0 wannabe. Get rid of it. It’s silly. Might as well say “Under Construction”.
Spread the word
The nomination for the Rick Astley, Best Act Ever, has been recalled due to scripts such as the rickvoter being used.
I’ve read a little on the rickvoter script and it seems it allowed the same person to vote thousands of times. You can read more about the rickvoter at http://rickvoter.com
And it would have been so cool to see MTV rick roll the world.
pretty sad when you rely on slow, public torrent sites to get your media anyway.
but to each their own i guess…
Even sadder when you have to pat yourself on the back by telling the world how 1337 you are for using some ultra-hot-super-top-secret private trackers.
I won’t use these nouveau services while they index shithawk sites such as sumotorrents, mybittorrent, btjunkie & torrenthound(who he?).
Like Jasper van Weerd says, Torrentz will ALWAYS PWN YOU while you don’t verify your torrents.
Fuck all of you fake-file traders in the arse - no offence…
HTH
HAND
YMMV
IANAL
kthxbai
Interesting article.
26 - suckit
All these meta-search sites do is leech off the torrent sites that actually do something useful.
Do any of them share their ad revenues with the sites they mine?
Of course not.
its all cat and mouse
the riaa are the biggest crybabies going
this will all end in crying
Unlike Nowtorrents isoHunt actually hosts bittorrent files. Who cares about realtime when you still need to go here there and everywhere to get yout torrents, when you can get them all from the one place, albeit slightly after they hit the net. Host some torrents, start a tracker, something. Another site that does nothing but return other sites results is a waste of space and hardly worth the bandwidth it takes to host them.
Does realtime mean fake peer statistics? Newtorrent seem just like Youtorrent used to be with their completely crap peer counts. They use the same shitty sites for their searches like Seedpeer who cant count to save their lives. An example perhaps?
The Simpsons S20E02 PDTV XviD-XOR
1F28162A B1C67F8A 7590E009 CC18664A 92C7C93B
http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce
TPB says L1874 S293
isoHunt says L1837 S174 (on last scrape)
Seedpeer says S54,162 L49.049
Newtorrent says ^^
Newtorrents uses borked results from iffy sites and is as believable as a $30 note.
Wow YouTorrent has really evolved. The last time I saw it was when it first launched. I may have to start using it.
Anyone seen http://www.BtZip.org i use that and it rocks
Why search through crappy sites with fakes ? Almost all the BoxOffice torrents say they are DVD rips, but they only exists as cams and TS.
Better off using TPB or some closed tracker…
Scoop torrent is easy to use, but I think http://www.torrent-searcher.com/is better. The overview and the usability are better.
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