TorrentFreak’s Top 10 YouTorrent Alternatives
Written by enigmax on April 14, 2008After YouTorrent decided that they were only interested in indexing a relatively tiny amount of licensed content from seven other sites, their links to content dropped dramatically. If the word on the BitTorrent streets is to be believed, their users are doing the same. But where will they go for their meta-searches?
When we announced that YouTorrent was launching, I don’t think we expected the site to grow in popularity as quickly as it did. A month after its launch the site was pulling in 2.5 million visitors and climbing - quickly. It even caught ‘Jon’ the owner of YouTorrent off guard, although he couldn’t have been that surprised after investing a considerable $20,000 to secure the YouTorrent.com domain. The site doesn’t even have adverts to finance itself. And is now up for sale. Hmmm. Surprises all round, then - and some.
“My goal is to be in the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet in two years,” ‘Jon’ told BusinessWeek. “If I can corner the torrent market, everyone would rely on the site for profits, just as people look to Google for search-based advertising revenue.”
Yesterday, Patrick from YouTorrent told us: “The YouTorrent project has grown very quickly and unfortunately is not in line with the owning company’s core business.”
Unfortunately, the chances of becoming the BitTorrent equivalent of Google have evaporated. Having courted the file-sharing masses and gained huge amounts of free publicity as a result, the site is only now of interest to a tiny subset of them and it appears that for many, the site will never be useful again. So having just lost 99% of its original target market, it won’t be as much use to advertisers either. Wait….the site doesn’t have any ads……
This is getting confusing. Back to the matter in hand.
Top 10 YouTorrent (meta-search) Alternatives
1. PizzaTorrent
PizzaTorrent was the first YouTorrent clone, so it deserves to be top of the list.
2. NowTorrents
Another YouTorrent clone.
3. Torrentz
Fast, clean and reliable. Probably the best meta-search engine out there.
4. LookTorrent
A relatively new meta-search engine that presents search results in separate tabs
5. Torrents.to
Torrent.to uses a toolbar at the top of the page to search several BitTorrent sites.
6. Morrent
A meta-search engine with categories and advanced search operators.
7. Torrent-Finder
Searched more that 100 private and public BitTorrent sites, the results open in separate tabs.
8. TorrentScan
TorrentScan allows you to search 13 BitTorrent sites from one page.
9. BitDig
This could be a great site if they decided to got rid of the excessive advertising.
10. TorrentScoop
A meta serach engine powered by the Google coop service.
BitTorrent meta-search engines can be a great and easy way to find torrents. However, they are useless if all the sites they index host the same .torrent files. So, no matter how useful these site may seem, they are pretty much useless if there are no trackers.
Do you know any other new BitTorrent sites that are worth visiting? Leave a comment and share it with us…
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk15)
Next: The Pirate Bay Demands Compensation for IFPI Block
69 Responses
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Hey! First one to say yo!!!
Cheers!
Http://www.ezee.se/
Slow news day? if you’re going to put out a list of alternatives, you could at least write a little about the merits of each one, you lazy git.
One of the most pointless endeavors ever.
[quote comment="346218"]Hey! First one to say yo!!!
Cheers!
Http://www.ezee.se/[/quote]
You are a douchebag. Nobody cares if you posted first.
As said. Useless without proper trackers.
More Trackers less search! Imagine when the Pirate bay falls. All those third party sites won’t have anything to give anyway.
Not to pick on them particularly, but as an exemplar of a trend, take a look at torrent-finder.
It represents the worst of all worlds. The problem with meta-search engines has been that each site has its own idiosyncratic ways of classifying, and of responding to search requests.
For example, one site may classify “Thunderdrums” as a movie, while the next site classifies it as “Action Movie”, and the third side classifies it as “Video, Movie”. This is bad enough.
But if I search for “Blue Ball”, some sites will take that to mean “blue” and “ball”, some to mean “blue” OR “ball”, some will take quotation marks as a modifier meaning the exact phrase, and others will take the quotation marks as part of the search string (usually returning no results - d’oh!).
Torrent-finder’s approach is to do nothing, and because that doesn’t work, to present each site’s results in an individual tab, so you can see the chaos.
This is not helpful.
Youtorrent’s best feature was returning all of the results from all of the sites in a single page, although it hadn’t solved these problems. At least it didn’t obfuscate the results, or simply punt the whole problem.
I would rather search several sites one by one, than use torrent-finder to search them. At least when I do them individually, I can find out and allow for their individual quirks. Torrent–finder just confuses the issue, makes it unclear whether there were really no results for this site, or their search-expression interpretation means I need to try it a different way.
Sure, it’s a tough problem. That doesn’t give you a pass for doing nothing about it, as torrent-finder and several others, most others, did. This is principally why torrent-search sites have largely been failures.
Who needs all these sites anyway? Google roxxors, ’nuff said. :-)
I’m surprised scrape torrent isn’t in this list!
Great search engine.
[quote comment="346255"]I’m surprised scrape torrent isn’t in this list!
Great search engine.[/quote]
same for isohunt
[quote comment="346218"]Hey! First one to say yo!!!
Cheers!
Http://www.ezee.se/[/quote]
What a fuckhead.
Cheers!
[quote comment="346243"]Not to pick on them particularly, but as an exemplar of a trend, take a look at torrent-finder.
It represents the worst of all worlds. The problem with meta-search engines has been that each site has its own idiosyncratic ways of classifying, and of responding to search requests.
For example, one site may classify “Thunderdrums” as a movie, while the next site classifies it as “Action Movie”, and the third side classifies it as “Video, Movie”. This is bad enough.
But if I search for “Blue Ball”, some sites will take that to mean “blue” and “ball”, some to mean “blue” OR “ball”, some will take quotation marks as a modifier meaning the exact phrase, and others will take the quotation marks as part of the search string (usually returning no results - d’oh!).
Torrent-finder’s approach is to do nothing, and because that doesn’t work, to present each site’s results in an individual tab, so you can see the chaos.
This is not helpful.
Youtorrent’s best feature was returning all of the results from all of the sites in a single page, although it hadn’t solved these problems. At least it didn’t obfuscate the results, or simply punt the whole problem.
I would rather search several sites one by one, than use torrent-finder to search them. At least when I do them individually, I can find out and allow for their individual quirks. Torrent–finder just confuses the issue, makes it unclear whether there were really no results for this site, or their search-expression interpretation means I need to try it a different way.
Sure, it’s a tough problem. That doesn’t give you a pass for doing nothing about it, as torrent-finder and several others, most others, did. This is principally why torrent-search sites have largely been failures.[/quote]
Try pizzatorrent. Very similar in both functionality & look to the (now less than useless) youtorrent.
=]
http://www.scrapetorrent.com
[quote comment="346227"][quote comment="346218"]Hey! First one to say yo!!!
Cheers!
Http://www.ezee.se/[/quote]
You are a douchebag. Nobody cares if you posted first.[/quote]
Well you definitely do.
Torrenz.com is the best search engine, no doubt about it.
Sweet Thanks… I just heard source from TorrentFreak, mentioned on Buzz Out Loud 702…
umm btjunkie?
pizzatorrent for me :)
Slow day for news or something?
I never understood the point of indexers. Just search the trackers themselves.
wow no love for isohunt?
“I never understood the point of indexers. Just search the trackers themselves.”
Or save ten minutes…
Torrentz seems the best and scrape is a good contender.
[quote comment="346227"][quote comment="346218"]Hey! First one to say yo!!!
Cheers!
Http://www.ezee.se/[/quote]
You are a douchebag. Nobody cares if you posted first.[/quote]
Says the true _used_ douchebag…
TF.. been coming here for quite some time because of the great articles… but lately the quality has been slipping, is it just slow newsdays or….?
Plus a little bug in your software, I have not posted here in hours but I keep getting a “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.” error.
[quote comment="346242"]As said. Useless without proper trackers.
More Trackers less search! Imagine when the Pirate bay falls. All those third party sites won’t have anything to give anyway.[/quote]
There’s always DHT…
what about
http://www.scrapetorrent.com
I dont think isohunt and btjunky are meta search engines.
btjunkie is the best, by a country mile.
[quote comment="346343"]wow no love for isohunt?[/quote]
No.
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