The selections criteria are based on following parameter. The main factor of popularity was based on the traffic site receives (Alexa Ranking has been used to determine it). The second factor for popularity was number of sites that are linking in (Yahoo inbound links has been used to determine it). Also average number of peers has been taken into consideration for tracker sites that made into the list.

Mininova has been simply the best of torrent sites for year. Mininova has crossed its one million torrents listing and three billion torrents download this year. In addition to indexing, Mininova has its own tracker also. Mininova tops our popular torrent sites list this year as usual.

IsoHunt is a popular torrent index and torrent search engine. IsoHunt is one among the few sites that withstood the legal battle on piracy even though it had to take away it own torrent tracking service TorrentBox from US. IsoHunt uses tracker cross-referencing that enables to track across identical trackers across other tracker sites.

ThePirateBay is one of the world’s largest torrent trackers. ThePirateBay also gives clutter free interface for the user. TPB has its own tracker for its torrent index and has top listing of torrents etc. ThePirateBay also has released it own browser toolbar. This is one of my personal favorite all time.

TorrentZ has a powerful and advanced search engine that enables you to search for the filenames rather than torrents. TorrentZ is only site that makes into list without featuring its own tracker. TorrentZ only indexes torrents available on another trackers. Another plus point is TorrentZ is ads free!

BTJunkie is one among the largest and more advanced torrent search engines. BTJunkie crawler indexes both the public and private torrents, which put together gives a most comprehensive torrents listing. BTJunkie also know for indexing most number of torrents in total.

This year special mention goes to Demonoid and TorrentSpy. Both of them were doing exceptionally well during last year. Demonoid remained to be a largest private tracker site. Demonoid was completely bought down couple of months back. In TorrentSpy case, they index is still active but the search feature has been disable for US visitors due to the piracy issue.Altogether this year was full of battles on piracy. You can read more information on torrents at TorrentFreak.

Let me ask you this question. Have you ever used torrents? Do you think they are against piracy?

Update 12/29 : TorrentFreak has listed it top popular torrent sites

Google is ranked as best search engine over the Internet with simple and humble features Google is no more just a great search engine; it has lot more to do with it. Google has tons of hidden features, some of which are quite fun and most of which are extremely useful — if you’re aware about it. I use lot of the features with Google.

Simple Calculator
Google has a simple to use web-based calculator. All you have to do is enter your equation or formula into the standard Google search box, and then click the Google Search button. The result of the calculation is displayed on the search results page; it’s that simple.

And Google’s calculator isn’t limited to basic addition and multiplication. It can also handle more advanced calculations, trigonometric functions, inverse trigonometric functions, hyperbolic functions, and logarithmic functions. Just enter the proper formula into the search box, and wait for Google to display the answer.

In addition to performing calculations, Google also knows a variety of mathematical and scientific constants, such as pi, Avogadro’s number, and Planck’s constant. It also knows the radius of the Earth, the mass of the sun, the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and a lot more.

A sample complex equation which google can find solution(243 log(34))/(10e4 +(2*20))

To find the vaulue of pi just enter pi google returns 3.14159265.
To find out speed of light enter speed of light, and Google returns 299,792,458 m/s

Handy Unit Converter
Another advance to Google’s calculator is that it can handle conversion also. It knows miles and meters, furlongs and light years, seconds and fortnights, and even angstroms and Smoots—and can convert from one unit of measurement to another.

The key to using the Google calculator as a converter is to express your query using the proper syntax. In essence, you want to start with the first measure, followed by the word “in,” followed by the second unit of measure. A general query looks like this: x first units in second units.

To find out how many feet equal a meter, enter the query 1 meter in feet.
To find how many teaspoons are in a cup, enter 1 cup in teaspoons.
To convert 100 U.S. dollars into Indian Rupees, enter 100 usd in inr.

A World Dictionary
Are you looking for a definition of a particular word, but don’t want to bother pulling out the old hardcover dictionary? Not sure of a specific spelling? Then use Google as an online dictionary to look up any word you can think of. It’s easy—and there are two ways to do it.

The first approach to looking up definitions is to use a ´All you have to do is enter the keywords what is in your query, followed by the word in question. (No question mark is necessary)

To look up the definition of the word “defenestrate,” enter what is defenestrated.

A Glossary Repository
Even more definitions are available when you use the Google Glossary feature. Google Glossary is what Google calls it, anyway; really, it’s just another advanced search operator that produces some very specific results.

The operator in question is define: Use this operator before the word you want defined, with no spaces between. It can also used to define phrases.

To define the word “defenestrate,” enter the query define:defenestrate.
To define the phrase “peer to peer”, enter the query define:”peer to peer”.

Public Facts Sheet
Google can search Fact-based information, such as population, and so on. All you have to do is enter a query that states the fact you want to know.

To find the population of Texas, enter population Texas.
To find who is the president of United States, enter president United States.

The answers to these questions are displayed at the top of your search results page. You get the precise answer to your question, according to the referenced website. Click the associated link to learn more from this source.

Celebrity Book
Google knows much in details about most of world popular celebrity. You can easily spot their date of birth, birthplace, etc., with the Google search. See the sample search performed on some popular figures.

To find where Jennifer Lopez was born, enter birthplace Jennifer Lopez.
To find when Hillary was born, enter birthday Hillary Clinton.
To find when Raymond Chandler died, enter die Raymond Chandler.

World Clock
Google knows you’re time irrespective of you’re location, time zone, etc. Just type in the place where you need to find out the time. The format would be time [Place/City/Country/Area Code]

For example to find out the time in Los Angeles, type in “time Los Angeles” in the search box and hit enter.

Google will return you the current local time in Los Angeles. Find more about how to use search engines as World Clock, here.

Weather Reporter
Google can be used to find and display current weather conditions and forecasts. It’s a pretty easy search; all you have to do is enter the keyword weather, followed by the location. You can enter the location as a city name, city plus state, or Zip code.

To view the weather forecast for Chicago, enter weather Chicago.

Google displays current weather conditions and a four-day forecast at the top of the search results page. And, while this is a good summary report, you may want to click through to the more detailed forecasts offered in the standard search results listings below the four-day forecast.

Airport Conditions Keeper
Weather information is important to travelers, as is information about flight and airport delays. Fortunately, you can use the main Google search page to search for this information, just as you did with weather forecasts.

To search for weather conditions and delays at a particular airport, all you have to do is enter the airport’s three-letter code, followed by the word airport.

To view conditions at the O’Hare International Airport, Chicago (ORD), enter ord airport.

This displays a link to conditions at the chosen airport; click this link for detailed information.

Flight Status Tracker
Google also lets you track the status of any U.S. flight and many international flights. All you have to do is enter the flight number into the Google search box.

To find out the status of Air India flight 125, enter AIC125

Google now may displays links to three sites that let you track the flight status—Travelocity, Expedia, and fboweb. Click one of these links to view real-time flight status—including maps of where the plane is in its route.

Track Packages
Tracking capabilities of Google is not only limited with flights but also you can track each and every package. Google lets you track the status of package deliveries, from the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS. All you have to do is enter the package’s tracking number into the Google search box, and Google will display a link to the service’s tracking page for that package.

To track a package shipped with US, enter 061319610297856

You can also specify the service provider before the tracking number. In most of cases google will automatically identify the provider.

A Giant Phone Directory
As part of its massive database of information, Google now includes listings for millions of U.S. households in what it calls the Google PhoneBook. You search the PhoneBook listings from the main Google search box, using specific query parameters.

All you have to do is enter some combination of the following parameters: first name (or initial), last name, city, state, or Zip code.

To search for John Smith in Minneapolis, enter john smith minneapolis mn. As you might suspect, the more details you provide, the more targeted your results will be.

And here’s something even cooler—Google lets you perform reverse phone number lookups. Just enter the full phone number, including area code, into the standard Google search box. You can enter all 10 numbers in a row, without hyphens (like this: 1234567890), or use the standard hyphenated form (like this: 123-456-7890); Google accepts either method. When you click the search button, Google displays a single matching PhoneBook result.

Google Knows Area Codes
It goes without saying that if Google knows phone numbers, it also knows area codes. If you have an area code and want to know which city it serves, just enter the area code; Google will return the city in which that area code resides.

To know area information of Washington, DC (202 is Washington’s Area code), enter 202.

Movie Guide
Google search box can also be used to look up movie reviews and show times. All you have to do is enter the word movies followed by the name of the movie.

To find out when Casino Royale is showing in your neighborhood, enter movies casino royale.

Music Information
Google is a great search engine for music. Google knows the names of tens of thousands of popular performers; all you have to do is enter the performer’s name in the search box, and Google returns specific information about that performer.

For example, when you search for norah jones, Google displays a Norah Jones section at the top of the search results page. This section includes a brief listing of the artist’s most recent (or most well-known) albums and songs.

Specialized Search Services
Google also let’s you to do specialized search based on what you’re looking for. Here is the list of specialized search service provided by Google.

google.com/blogsearch – Searches all open blogs and posts.
google.com/imghp – Searches all the available images over internet.
google.com/codesearch – Searches all publicly available source code.
google.com/finance – Searches for finance related info like stock quote, company etc.
google.com/maps – Searches for local business information.
google.com/linux – Searches all variety of Linux-related sites.
google.com/microsoft – Searches all Windows related sites.
google.com/mac – Searches all Apple related.
google.com/bsd – Searches all BSD related only sites.
google.com/news – Searches within news items.
google.com/froogle – Searches online shopping sites for specific products.
google.com/books – Searches the full text of hundreds of thousands books.
google.com/ig/usgov – Searches a variety of U.S. government websites.
google.com/scholar – Searches a database of journals, articles, papers, theses and books.
google.com/patents – Searches for the patents.
google.com/video – Searches for videos that are hosted on Google Video and YouTube.

This is an extended version of “Exploring Google’s Hidden Feature”

As we’re close to New Year, I decided to put up a comprehensive list of torrent site that were popular in year 2006.

The criteria I used to evaluate these torrent sites were; ease of use and searching, speed of access, information provided about the files, information provided about the current torrent status etc. Moreover traffic ranking was taken into account for the list.

1. Mininova.org
Mininova is simple to use and biggest torrent listing sites. The site started in January 2005 as a successor SuprNova, It is a directory and search engine for all kinds of torrent files. Visitors of mininova can anonymously upload torrents to this site, tracked by any BitTorrent tracker. The word ‘mininova’ ranked 9 on Google’s list of most queried terms in 2006. Mininova is our top picks for this year.

2. TorrentSpy.com
TorrentSpy is a popular BitTorrent indexing Web Site. It hosts torrent and provides a forum to comment on them, as well as a graphical portrayal of how healthy the torrents are. Torrentspy was as popular as Mininova and made it to 2nd place.

3. ThePirateBay.org
The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) is an Internet site that bills itself as the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, and also serves as an index for torrent files that it tracks. Due to BitTorrent’s ability to handle extremely large files, it is popular for sharing large music sets, movies and software as well as Linux distribution discs.

4. isoHunt.com
isoHunt is a popular BitTorrent index. isoHunt is one of the most popular search engines for BitTorrent links. The website has been sued for copyright infringement recently. Isohunt has a large collection of varied content.

5. Demonoid.com
Demonoid is a popular private BitTorrent tracker for the peer-to-peer distribution of files. The website features a publicly accessible search engine, although membership is required to download more than three torrents per week. Demonoid will allow user registration only on Friday’s. Demonoid is a private BitTorrent tracker, however it also indexes external torrents that make us to place them in 5th place.

6. Torrentz.com
Torrentz is a popular Torrent indexing and Torrent search engine. It does not help to track your torrents. The torrent search engine is more advance as it allows you to search for files within the torrents. If you’re looking for unique stuff you should prefer this site.

7. TorrentPortal.com
Torrent Portal is famous for holding large number of active torrents. The search feature gives powerful options to its users. The torrent portal is ad supported for standard Free members.

8. TorrentBox.com
TorrentBox is your best source for the greatest torrents. TorrentBox also lets users to track their torrents. TorrentBox also features a forum, directory and simple search engine for torrents.

9. TorrentReactor.to
TorrentReactor has the comprehensive listing of torrents. The site claims it has the most active torrents. TorrentReactor was much popular in the beginning of year, but still managed a position in the top list.

10. TorrentScan.com
TorrentScan is gaining popularity these days. TorrentScan scans across all the popular bit torrent search engines. It has comprehensive collection of torrent search engines, which make the user to get their required torrent with ease.

Special mention goes to Seedler.org was one of the popular torrent search site and my favorite during the start of year. It has lost completely the popularity now because of reliability issues.

Warning: BenH.org is not accountable and responsible for the content of any site that has been listed above.