Available in English Alexa rank 186 (July 2016) | Created by Flippy (alias) Commercial No | |
Type of site Torrent meta-search engine Website torrentz.eu
(.com until April 2011) | ||
Torrentz was a Finland-based meta-search engine for BitTorrent that was run by an individual known as Flippy. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites, and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012 and again in 2015.
Contents
Usage
The user interface was simple and minimal. It consisted of two basic blocks: a user menu and a search panel. Users were not required to register before searching the files. The search field was autocomplete-enabled, providing suggestions based on popular searches that match the currently typed keywords.
To perform a search, users would simply type in a string of keywords related to their desired content and execute the search by either pressing the search button in the UI or press the enter key on the keyboard. From there, a list of matching torrent files were displayed on the screen for the user to choose from. This list could be filtered by age (one day, three days, one week or one month) and by "safety & quality" (any, good or verified). By default the "good" filter was applied. "Verified" was reserved for torrents uploaded by well-known groups.
Selecting a torrent from the search results list would take the user to another page listing the websites currently hosting the specified torrent with which the user can download the file(s). Selecting a host would redirect the user to the external website so they may complete the download of the torrent file.
History
In November 2008, scammer(s) using fake papers tried to take over the torrentz.com domain. As a backup, the site administrator set up the domain torrentz.eu. After 18 December 2010, torrentz.eu became the site's default domain because of the domain name seizures carried out by US authorities on various torrent websites.
In 2013, Paramount Pictures sent a DMCA claim to Google to remove Torrentz homepage and two other pages from the search engine. Torrentz counter claimed on this request saying the links do not infringe any copyright policy.
On 26 May 2014, Torrentz had its domain name suspended without a court order following a request from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. A day after, the suspension of torrentz.eu was lifted. The website has three alternative domains (.me .ch .in) and is hoping to move the .eu domain to a new registrar. All of these domains have since been blocked within the UK by UK ISP BSkyB.
On August 5, 2016, Torrentz was shut down by its operators with the message "Torrentz will always love you. Farewell." displayed; it operated for over 13 years.