People looking for all kinds of files tend to visit file-sharing sites for their fix but there is another way. FilePursuit is a web and Android-based service that trawls the Internet looking for open directories and it does an incredible job. Today, TorrentFreak catches up with its creator to find out where it all started.

Ask someone to name a search engine and it’s likely that 95 out of 100 will say ‘Google’. There are plenty of others, of course, but its sheer dominance means that even giants like Bing have to wait around for a mention.

However, if people are looking for something special, such as video and music files, for example, there’s an interesting search engine that’s largely flying under the radar. FilePursuit, accessible via the web or directly from its dedicated Android apps, is somewhat of a revelation.

What FilePursuit does is trawl the Internet looking for web servers that are not only packed with content but are readily accessible to the outside world. This means that a search on the site invariably turns up treasure troves of material, all of it for immediate and direct HTTP download.

TorrentFreak caught up with the operator of the site who himself is a very interesting character.

“I’m a 21-year-old undergrad student from New Delhi, India, currently studying engineering. I started this file search engine project all by myself to learn web development and this is my first project,” he informs TF.

“I picked this project because I was surprised to find that there are lots of ‘open directory’ websites and no one is maintaining any type of record or database on them. There are thousands of ‘open directory’ websites containing a lot of amazing stuff not discovered yet, so I made them discoverable.”

Plenty of files from almost any search

FilePursuit began its life around September 2016 and since then has been receiving website submission requests (sites to be indexed by FilePursuit) from people all over the world. As such the platform is somewhat of a community effort but in respect of running the operation, it’s all done by one man.

“FilePursuit saves time in two ways: by eliminating the need to find file manually, and by performing searches at high speeds efficiently. Without this, you would have to look at sites one by one and pore over the contents of each carefully – a tedious prospect,” he explains.

“FilePursuit automatically compares your criteria to billions of webpages and gives you results in a fraction of a second. You can perform hundreds of searches in the course of a few minutes, altering the criteria as you narrow down results.”

So if Google dominates the search space, why doesn’t it do a better job of finding files than the relatively low-key FilePursuit? Its operator says it’s all about functionality.

“FilePursuit is a file search engine, it generates file links as results while other search engines give out webpages as results. However, it’s possible to search for file links directly from Google too but it’s limited to documents only. On FilePursuit you can search for almost any filetype just by selecting ‘custom’ and typing filetype in search results.”

Of course, it would be impossible for FilePursuit to find any files if webmasters and server operators didn’t leave them open to the public. Considering it’s simplicity itself to find all the latest movies and TV shows widely accessible, is this a question of stupidity, kindness, carelessness, or something else?

“In my opinion, most people are unaware that they have created an open directory and on the other hand some people want to share interesting files from their servers, which is very generous of them,” FilePursuit’s creator says.

When carrying out searches it really is amazing what FilePursuit can turn up. Files lead to directory results and some can contain many thousands of files, from every music artist one can think of through to otherwise private text files that people really should take more care over. Other things are really quite odd.

“When I look for ‘open directory’ websites, sometimes I find really amazing stuff and sometimes even bizarre stuff too. This one time, I found a collection of funeral recordings,” FilePursuit’s owner says.

While even funeral recordings can have a copyright owner somewhere, it’s the more regular mainstream content that’s most easily found with the service. The site doesn’t carry any copyrighted content at all but that doesn’t mean it’s unresponsive to takedown demands.

“I have more than three million file links indexed in my database so it can be a bit hard for me to check for copyrighted content. Although whenever I receive a mail from copyright holders or someone representing copyright holders, I always uphold their request of deleting the file link from my database and also explain to them that the file link they requested me to delete, that particular file may still exist.”

In recent months, FilePursuit has enjoyed a significant upsurge in traffic but it’s still a relatively small player in the search engine space with around 7,000 to 10,000 hits per day. However, this clever site is able to deal with five times that traffic and upgrading servers to cope with surges can be carried out in two to three minutes, “at most.”

So the big question remains – What will you find under the tree today?

FilePursuit website here, Android apps (free, pro)