December 01, 2007 by sharky
There’s truly not a lot of BitTorrent ’search’ software - heck, the websites that host the torrent files do a pretty darn good job of searching for torrents! Plus, there are torrent metasearch sites that show aggregated search results for various combined BitTorrent websites. But here’s a few software solutions that may be able to assist in finding torrents that you may not be able to find on your favorite sites.
Torrent Harvester v0.7b
FREEWARE
Torrent Harvester is software that contains a database of search engine URLs from popular torrent sites. So when searching with Harvester, it contacts all the search engines on its list and shows the results from all - on one page. Get the latest version 0.7b here.
Since Torrent Harvester is software that relies on a database file, not all of the torrent websites on the list will add to the search results - some are now closed, or moved their search link, etc. Users can also edit the ‘database engine’ and add their own torrent sites, and remove ones that no longer work.
We recommend that you play around with the seed/peer columns in the search window - this will help in deciding which torrents are popular (and thus working).
Our notes: Primarily we don’t use software to search for torrents, we just use the old-fashioned way of visiting our favorite torrent sites. Reason? We like to see the detailed information about a torrent before downloading it.
Torrent Harvester requires Microsoft’s .NET Framework to be installed in order to run. If you don’t already have it installed and are getting an “application failed to initialize” error, download .NET here.
Torrent Search Bar v4.5.126.0
FREEWARE
They should’ve called this the “Torrent-slash-Google-slash-weather Search Bar” instead. Torrent Search Bar is brought to you by the same people who gave you eXeem - a pay-to-use BitTorrent website (now defunct, it’s been re-branded and now called “Torrent Search” - with the same monetary requirements).
Can’t say we’re overjoyed with this one. The ‘main’ Torrent search page (the one that’s supposed to search all the torrent sites) doesn’t work, or didn’t at the time of testing, and showed zero results. Isn’t that supposed to be the marquee feature of the Torrent Search Bar? We wanted it to work, but we still had to click on each and every listed torrent site to generate search results. Hey, isn’t that the same thing as having torrent sites in your bookmarks?! How is that helping? Alas, download it here, if you must.
TSB adds a whole lot of nothing to your browser. The ‘Net is already full of ads in the browser, with TSB now they’re on the browser, too. And if I wanted a ‘weather’ toolbar I would’ve downloaded one! The one mildly redeeming quality is the integrated RSS feed that’s linked up to some popular Bit sites.
Anyone who knows anything about BitTorrent and how to search for torrent files will undoubtedly avoid this junk like the plague. And now for the uninstall: It must be done through the Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs since it doesn’t create a Start Menu entry. Oh, and you’ll have to restart your computer afterwards, too.
JPTorrent v3.0
FREEWARE
JPTorrent is a small utility that features in-program searching of various torrent sites - 65 in total. The results aren’t all shoved together - each torrent site has it’s own page (or frame) in the JPTorrent program. We kinda like this little program! The only slight drawback is that the list of torrent sites is not configurable - WYSIWYG.
BitChe
FREEWARE
Bit Che is a great program for torrent searching. In contrast to torrent meta search websites (that usually limit the querying to the top 10 public sites), Bit Che software implements many more sites in the search, with the ability to add others, and even add your own (for unlimited torrent searching). Torrent data is shown in the results, giving users the ability to quickly gauge what torrents are likely the best sources for a popular release.
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