The best Usenet Search Engines
This article is going to list some of the best Usenet search engines that are freely available on the Internet. Freely meaning that you do not have to create an account first or get invited to use them.
The Usenet is considered by many a dark side of the Internet, something that those who know do not talk about and those who do not know don't want to know about because it seems utterly complicated to begin with.
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 a little bit of configuration in regards to the groups that you want to subscribe.
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 directly to start the download. It works similar to torrent files in this regard but without any peer to peer connections. 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.
Working newsgroup search engines
Binsearch offers a general search option on its main page, and an advanced search that you can run using additional parameters.
The general search lets you enter a search term, pick the results per page and maximum age per post, and select whether you want the most popular groups searched or other groups.
If you cannot find what you are looking for, you may want to select the other option so that all groups have been searched. If that does not work as well, try the advanced search which adds more options such as searching a specific group only or filtering results by size.
You can download NZB files directly using Binsearch to load them into your client of choice. Binsearch lets you search groups as well.
Binz displays recent NZBs on its front page. Here you can use the search feature to find files posted to 2000 groups that the service scans regularly for new contents, or browse specific groups of interest instead.
One difference to Binsearch is that you cannot select multiple results at once for download, as there are no selection boxes available to do so. If you have searched for files and the results show ten, twenty or one hundred that you want to download, you will have to select them all one by one.
NZB.cc lets you search newsgroups as well, but the interface that it makes available is rather minimalistic. While some may like that, it does not display a lot of information about each upload.
NZBs can be downloaded right from the search results page, but only one at a time. There is no option to browse groups or use advanced search parameters.
NZBClub is free to use but offers member accounts as well which provide additional benefits such as adding searches to your favorites, access to a search history and bigger watch lists.
The search provides interesting options. You can hide spam, files with passwords and adult contents, and filter by group, poster, size or days.
While NZBStars offers a search, it is also sorting files into various categories such as image (which includes videos), sounds or applications.
While that may be convenient, it is displaying popups whenever you switch to a different filter. It is also worth noting that the site only searches withing the categories it provides which means that you won't find certain files here that other search engines list.
The search engine displays categories as well, but you can alos use the search, browse popular tags or take a look at screenshots posted on the site. The screenshots set it apart from other services.
This usenet search engine displays a sidebar next to the results which you can use to filter what is being displayed. You can filter by time, poster or group for example, and change the sorting options as well.
This seems to concentrate on TV shows only. You can browse shows on the site or subscribe to RSS feeds which you can add to your RSS reader of choice.
Search across all supported groups and use advanced parameters to define what is being searched and what not. Offers to limit results by size, poster, nfo content, age and other information. Can also be used to browse groups manually.
This one is a rather messy site due to the massive number of links posted on the site's frontpage. You can use the search to search across all supported groups, browse groups individually, or browse by keyword.
Archive
Newzleech [not available anymore]
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.
Yabsearch.nl [not available anymore]
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.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.