Howto Search File Hosting Sites
By Josh | May 16, 2008
A lot of times I find files that I want to download that are hosted on Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire, etc. Usually I find the links to these files on other blogs or forums. None of those sites have a way to search their database, so the only way to do this is with a search engine like Google. Doing this is quick and easy, and I will go through two ways to do this below.
The Manual Way
Searching sites through Google is done by adding “site:URL” (without quotes, and replacing URL with the site address that you want to search) to your search. Example:
music site:mediafire.com
This will search mediafire for files with “music” in the name. Adding the filetype to the end of the search will allow you narrow your results. Example:
music site:mediafire.com mp3
This will only show you results that are of the mp3 filetype. You could also search for multiple file types by adding a | to the search followed by the other filetype. Example:
music site:mediafire.com mp3 | zip
This will give you results that are both mp3 and zip. As you can see, this can be great for searching for songs, and even full albums.
Create a Google Custom Search Engine
If you plan on doing this a lot, then you should consider creating a Google Custom Search Engine (or use the one I created, located below). Creating a custom search engine is easy. Just go to the Google Custom Search Engine page and follow the instructions. Then when you get to the part of entering in the site addresses, just put in the file hosting sites that you want to search. Then after you create your search engine, make sure to bookmark it. You’ll then be able to make quick searches on file hosting sites whenever you want.
If you are too lazy to make your own, here is the one I recently created. So far it just has rapidshare.com, megaupload.com, and mediafire.com. I’m sure I’ll be adding more to it as time goes on.
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