Visual Guide: the Top 35 Torrent Sites of 2009

as collected from reader submissions

Torrent Root is another metasearch engine, Torrent Root will pore through other search engines on your behalf, and display the results in a slick tabbed interface for your easy browsing.

Entertane is a "metasearch" engine. This means: it searches other search engine results, but present the results in a single screen for easy browsing. And Entertane does a slick job of providing eight other result sets in a convenient tabbed browsing format.

Demonoid is the benchmark private torrent site. All other private P2P communities compare themselves to Demonoid, and even with the massive competition, Demonoid still remains a top site in the eyes of downloaders everywhere. If you successfully get a registered membership at Demonoid, do not abuse it. Thousands of people are happy to take your spot if you do not share files and maintain your requisite ratio.

In a shocking turn of the tables this September, the Isohunt webmaster is counter-suing the Canadian music industry. He is claiming that previous copyright violation suits against him were unfounded, and that he is entitled to have his legal expenses recovered. Read the entire story at www.isohunt.com.

News Flash, April 18, 2009: the Stockholm district court has sentenced the four Pirate Bay founders to a year in prison, and over $USD 3.5 million in fines. This is as punishment for violating their country's copyright laws. More on this shocking court ruling here...

Another metasearch torrent service, Torrentscan was very popular in 2007 and 2008. While other metasearch engines have surpassed it for speed and appearance, Torrentscan remains a solid choice.

Bitsoup is another private torrent site, like Demonoid. The adminsitrators here seem to be truly committed to providing quality service, and filtering out the fakes and leeches. Definitely try Bitsoup if you are a serious downloader.

Fulldls offers some good power user features. You can customize the home page to display new torrents, you can message other members, you can set default sort order, and even tag favorites. A good site for serious downloaders.

For downloaders in the Mediterranean: GreekShare.net is a worthy private community. It has all the popular torrents available, plus many obscure European-content torrents.

Torrentshack, also known as Torrenthunt, is a rather plain looking search site. But plain is good, because it often means faster searching for people on slower connections. Torrentshack has been recommended by several About.com readers lately.