TorrentSection - A Simple, Powerful Torrent Search Site

June 01, 2010 by sharky

In a perfect BitTorrent world, public torrent index sites wouldn’t be forced to shut down, censor content or block IP ranges. Popular torrent indexers TPB, MN & IH have become obsolescent to BitTorrent so as long as others continue to exist. The short (but sweet) history of BitTorrent is evidently repeating itself - indexers will continue to come and go.

Yet there’s a certain group of torrent sites that always seem to keep out of trouble, and that’s torrent meta-search sites. Take our featured torrent search TorrentSection.com, for example. Here’s a site that facilitates searching for torrents found on 12 popular torrent indexers, all in one handy search. Because TorrentSection doesn’t actually index the torrents itself (and only acts as a third-party), they stay under MAFIAA’s radar.

By no means is TorrentSection the only torrent meta-search available on the ‘net, but it does contain some very cool features. On the main page where searching is conducted, there’s a ‘tag cloud’ of popular past searches. However, it’s inside the search results where the real magic can be found.

Torrent Searching, Queries & Results

By default, search results are arranged by the number of total seeds (from high to low). Thus, the most popular torrents in relation to seeders are listed highest in the results of the query; possibly suggesting these to be the fastest torrents. Users can toggle this by clicking on the headings to display torrents by title, size, seeds, peers and health (health being a relationship between seeds, leechers & overall peers).

Categorical Browsing & Filters

When searching, various torrent categories for a particular query are available which can be filtered depending upon what categories you want to browse (simply click on a tab at the top of a search to show results from only that chosen category). What’s neat is that individual result categories can be closed (say for example, you searched for "Avatar" - you probably don’t want to see the results for "Adult" or "Ebooks").

Likewise, individual search results can be removed manually from the displayed list of torrents. Click the red X icon next to it to remove it (note, this does not work by using ‘cookies’ - so if you search again using the exact same query, previously removed torrents will automatically reappear in the new search).

Torrent Sites

TorrentSection pulls its results from 12 torrent indexers, and the searching is brilliantly zippy - almost instantaneous without any waiting whatsoever. Shown in the image to the right, users are able to filter results to display torrents from only one certain site, or multiple ones, by clicking on each torrent indexer’s icon (the default is "all" sites).

Change Selection Mode — Putting a checkmark here enables you to turn on (or off) individual torrent indexers from appearing in the results (for example, if you want to see results only from BTJunkie & ExtraTorrent). The filtering here is immediate.

Real-Time Filters

Another nifty feature is that any search can be fine-tuned to display only certain specific criteria that you choose (note that is also works in conjunction with toggling on/off various torrent sites). From here, results can be filtered to show particular seeds/leecher numbers, as well as by size of torrent release (handy for filtering through ‘junk’ results, especially on movie releases).

More importantly - the title or keywords in a torrent name can be filtered without having to include it in the original search. For example, you want to find DiAMOND’s ‘Avatar’ release (widely accepted as an official release) but you searched vaguely using the word "Avatar". No problem. In the search filter field, try adding something like "avatar diamond". Another option would be to use "avatar dvdrip" so as to remove all those screeners, telesyncs & cams that are unfortunately somehow still popular on public trackers (even though a DVDRiP clearly trumps them). Again, no need to re-query: the filtering is automatic.

Thorough Results; Clean Layout; No Ads

There are no adverts whatsoever. No popups, no pop-unders, no hidden surprises.

Unlike certain torrent indexers, TorrentSection doesn’t have any "sponsor links" (ie - the dreaded top 5 results that seem innocent enough yet urge visitors to purchase Usenet access or pay-to-download scam sites that ask you to signup). All of TorrentSection’s search results will point to a true ‘torrent download’ page on these indexing sites; but once you leave TorrentSection you’re in the hands of the indexer, obviously.

In our conclusion, TorrentSection is more than adequately competent for ‘indexing the indexers’ for most mainstream stuff. Hard-to-find releases, however, might be better served by visiting indexers directly, since they cover just 12 sites. Nonetheless, they provide an impressive view in real-time of what’s popular on some of the best torrent index sites on the Internet. Definitely worth checking out.

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