Binsearch
Free
Binsearch is one of the best known search engines for NZB files on the net. You can search for posts that are up to 1100 days old. Not a bad site but others often get you better search results with less spam. Also it was very difficult for us to find certain kinds of content, for example some TV series.
They offer these search options:
- Basic search where you pretty much just enter a term, select which groups you want to check and hit search.
- Advanced search where you can define several other features of the file you look for.
- Browsing through groups directly which is interesting for nostalgic “senior” Usenet downloaders and newbies alike.
One of the main problems with Binsearch is the huge amount of spam found in search results. Even when they remove some of those malicious posts you get page after page full of “90 results have been filtered out”, leaving you with almost empty result pages. The only way to circumvent this and all the other, unrecognised trash is to use advanced search and define a minimum size since a lot of bad results are really small in opposition to real, quality uploads. For that, select “advanced search” from the top menu.
Trash in the search results: An example (click to enlarge).
This doesn’t help when browsing groups though. Let’s look at the other features of Binsearch:
You can select whether to only search through the top 500 newsgroups or the other ~ 6000+ smaller ones. Also they group all the little split archives into one result which makes downloads way more handy.
On the pro side, you can also see the NFOs attached to many good posts, definitely a good thing.
The Verdict: Capable Search Engines, Huge Amounts Of Spam
Binsearch is a good site but others are simply better, especially when talking about spam and retention; 1100+ days just don’t cut it anymore when so many providers offer 2500 days+. If you don’t mind browsing through trash you can definitely find what you’re looking for, but there are much better alternatives available, both paid and free. Feel free to browse through our list of the best Usenet search engines.
