Currently about 5 Terabyte of data gets uploaded by users world wide to the Usenet, a figure that is surely about to increase as the popularity of Usenet services rise. Giganews is currently running so called Usenet trials which offer the first three months of Usenet access of some of their Usenet plans for half the usual price. Users can for example get an unmetered unlimited download plan for $12.49 or the premium Diamond plan with additional SSL encryption and 20 consecutive connections for $14.99.

What do you get for that? If you have never heard about Usenet or Newsgroups before you might be wary about joining a Usenet provider. That’s understandable. A good start is to take a look at our Usenet Search article which contains links to several Usenet Search Engines. They can be used just like any other search engine. Just enter a name in the search form and look at the results. Downloads are only possible with a Usenet account and a software client for Usenet. There are several choices, we outlined one in our Usenet Client article.

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The real benefits of the Usenet in my opinion are speed, if you have a good provider that is, reliability and better privacy, because of SSL and no direct user to user connections. On the downside we have the monthly fee, a Usenet client that has to be installed and configured and some time to subscribe to the right groups.

Usenet Search Engines help users find files faster. Most support the nzb protocol which combines all file information in one file that can be loaded into most Usenet clients. Good search engines should support advanced parameters, 200 day records, nzb creation and index most groups, at least the thousand+ important ones.

If you want to try the Usenet you could signup for a free 14 day trial at Giganews, the Usenet provider that I use for several years.

1. Newzleech

I have discovered Newsleech only recently but have to admit that it provides one of the best Usenet search engines. It provides users with a general search, an option to browse groups, to browse posts and to subscribe to RSS feeds to be informed when a new post matching the criteria is made.

Search results can be filtered by group, post age and size. The results are displayed in a list showing the most important information such as name, size, group, age and completion status. NZBs are created on the fly by checking at least one search result.

2. Binsearch.info

Binsearch offers basically the same features that Newsleech does. You can make a general search, search only specific groups and define post age, size and several other parameters. Results can be checked and a NZB file will be created in the process which can then be imported in the Newsreader.

3. Yabsearch.nl

A Dutch search engine with no English interface. Supports NZB creation and advanced search parameters. Displays size, name and completion status in the results.

Most information on those search engines is redundant meaning that all seem to index new posts fast enough and tend to display the same information in their search results. It’s still good to have some outs in case one of them goes down.

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