DiggTorrents Review - Google Powered BitTorrent Search

What Is DiggTorrents?

DiggTorrents, formerly known as GoogleTorrents, is a third-party search engine that uses Google Co-op's custom search engine creation tools to search specifically for Torrents and song lyrics.

DiggTorrents is located on the Web at diggtorrents.com. The previous link at www.googletorrents.com redirects to the new location.

Torrents or BitTorrents are files shared with the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. Peer-to-peer means that the files are shared by individual computers on the network rather than stored on one central server.

BitTorrent sharing distributes the download by downloading pieces of a file from many different sources, rather than downloading the whole thing from one computer or server. This makes it much less taxing on the individual computers involved, and it offers some protection that someone hasn't slipped malicious or corrupted files into the system.

Learn more about Torrents from the About Guide to Internet for Beginners.

Often the files will be songs, movies, or other entertainment media. Many of the files shared this way may be in violation of copyright law, and Hollywood has been less than forgiving with people who download pirated materials. If you download or distribute copyrighted material in the US and many other countries, you risk being sued or fined.

Torrents are also a legitimate method of distributing files.

There are legal content producers who choose to distribute their content through BitTorrent, because it does not use nearly as much bandwidth as serving files from a single Web site. It also offers some protection that the distributed file contains what it claims it contains. This makes it a great way to distribute promotional videos or open-source programs.

Creating and distributing Torrent files is easy. Finding Torrents, however, is not always so easy. There are several Torrent search engines which contain partial indexes of available files, but you may have to check several of them to find the file you seek.

DiggTorrents provides an easy way to find Torrents, because it searches most of the available indexes. It harnesses the search engine power of Google, so the results are generally relevant.

It's also handy to search for song lyrics, even if searching Google for "song X lyrics" is usually just as effective.

Because DiggTorrents uses Google to search, you can use some Google syntax, such as AND and OR searches. This is handy for those already acquainted with Google power searches.

DiggTorrents seems to have very little regard for the intellectual property of others. The former name GoogleTorrents and the current name DiggTorrents both incorporate the trademarked name of another company, and both names used logos very close to the trademarked logo.

The name "GoogleTorrents" was a logical choice, since the service does use Google search to find Torrents. The name DiggTorrents is not so logical, since this service does not appear to have anything to do with Digg, the social content site. At this rate, it just looks like a flimsy attempt to find another domain name purchaser.

DiggTorrents is also sloppy in places. The search engine works fine on the main page, but as of this writing, searching from the FAQ page yields errors, most likely because it is still pointing to the old GoogleTorrents address. There are only three pages on the entire Web site, so this shouldn't have been a difficult fix.

DiggTorrents is a generally good search engine for BitTorrent files and song lyrics. The advertising on the site is entirely from Google AdSense, so it is not as distracting as flashing banners and floating ads.

However the sloppy Web design and incorporation of trademarked elements into the name and logo make it seem like DiggTorrents is not in for the long haul. Use this service while you can, because it may not be here for long.