The best way to search for torrents is therefor in my opinion to use meta search engines unless you are on a private tracker or prefer to use only one torrent search engine and no other.

Meta torrent search engines can only be effective if they are fast and update their database regularly, real time updates being the optimum. The selection of torrent websites that are crawled is the second criteria for a good torrent meta search engine.

1. Youtorrent

Youtorrent came to light only recently. It currently supports ten torrent websites with the option to add another six in the preferences. The search is pretty fast and the related search terms are aiding the user in his search. Offers a Firefox plugin.

2. Pizzatorrent

Pizzatorrent supports 15 Bittorrent websites right out of the box. The search seems just a tad faster than that of Youtorrent and they divide the results in categories which is great if you are searching for broad terms. Offers a Firefox and Internet Explorer plugin plus a Facebook application.

3. Torrent Finder

Torrent Finder is the most comprehensive Bittorrent search engine which crawls more than a hundred torrent sites during a search. It is slower than the other two engines mentioned already and does not list all results in one frame but separates each torrent site in their own frame which means that users will have to click through dozens of sites which makes a comparison difficulty.

4. Multitorrent

Multitorrent is not really a meta crawler. It provides access to the database of several torrent websites but it is only possible to search one at a time. It does offer category searches though which the other engines don’t.

Pizzatorrent is the latest in a long line of torrent search engines. An initial glance at the site pulls up an interface much like popular search engine Youtorrent albeit in a different colour. Searching pulls up the same results as Youtorrent. But then that is to be expected since the two sites search the same torrent sites like PirateBay, IsoHunt, Mininova etc.

One difference with Pizzatorrent is that you can categorize search results. Therefore, torrents can be further segregated depending on the nature of the files they lead too. This is useful if you are looking for a file of a particular type such as software, video, etc.

I’d say Pizzatorrent is worth a lookup and the categorization of files is somewhat helpful. However, the site does not really offer anything radically different from other torrent search engines so I would not call this one special.

How did you like Pizzatorrent? Do you know of any other torrent search engines? Which one is your favorite? Let me know.

A better way would be to use a tool that would check availability by itself and report back to the user if a sign up is possible. Tracker Checker is a free software that can check 60 default torrent websites for sign up spots with the possibility to add new sites to the software with ease.

Tracker Checker runs a check every 60 seconds on all sites checked by the user to see if sing up spots are available. If you want to add new sites you simply add a name, a signup url and a string that defines the current state of the site. A positive string would be for instance “Desired username” on many websites which will of course only be shown if you can sign up.

A nice feature would be to be able to click on a link to load the sign up page in your default web browser. Right now sites can only be accessed by manually typing the url in the address bar of your browser.

The software is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Update: The Tracker Checker software is no longer maintained. While it is still possible to download the last release version from software portals, it is fair to assume that the program’s functionality won’t work anymore as well.

Users interested in these kinds of information can take a look at the web service Btracs which keeps track of select Bittorrent trackers and the status of their registration form.