Howto: Use Google to find MP3s
Little-known fact: Google can be used to find mp3 files, pdf files, and pretty much anything else that one could possibly want. Yes, that includes music.
When a person runs a website, one of the things their host provides is disk space in order to store the files that make up the site. The amount of space varies from plan to plan, but let’s suppose a particular site is allowed 5GB of space. As of the date of this post, this site only takes up 25MB of space. So, people typically use this extra space as a personal backup solution. They upload mp3s, photos, videos, and other interesting stuff. The catch is, sometimes they forget to make those files private, and Google will index them and allow us to search for them.
This search string allows us to look for mp3 files site owners have uploaded.
SONG_NAME_HERE intitle:”index.of” “parent directory” “size” “last modified” “description” [snd] (mp4|mp3|avi) -inurl:(jsp|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml|lyrics|mp3s|mp3|index|null3d|listen77|indexofmp3) -gallery -intitle:”last modified”
Copy that string into Google, and there should be a list of sites beginning with the words
“Index of …”
That tells you the link you’re clicking on is a folder on the server, rather than a page.
NOTE: There are some sites that pretend to be mp3 folders, but instead, serve up ads. The script does exclude some of the more prevalent ones, but be skeptical of the links you try. Generally, anything ending in .edu is safe, while sites with “indexof” or “mp3″ in their names are usually spam.
Once you’ve clicked the Google link, you’ll see a page like this:
Right-click on the file you want to download and choose “Save as…” In this case, we’re downloading Jonathan Coulton’s Code Monkey.
Ta-Da! the file is now saved to your hard drive.
Note: I have to pay my host per-megabyte, so there are no music files on this site. (Sorry)
Update: Yes, I know there are sites that can search this for you, but for some reason, I’ve had a hard time trusting them. Call me paranoid. And yes, if you want to search for other types of files than mp3, you’d replace (mp4|mp3|avi) with (pdf) or (wma|aac).
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hi raptor
nice trick .. thnx for the info .. i will post it on my blog .. with a backlink to u
keep it up
Thank you very much; this site is just a baby, so every link helps!
Pretty good – but you could just use skreemr.com which works just like google does.
jimmyr.com has this script(and many others) built into a custom google search on the top right of the page.
good trick, except i was doing this 2 weeks ago, downloaded maps by the yeah yeah yeahs, 10 seconds after my comp freezes, and blue screens on restart, never to turn on again until i reinstall OS… watch your back!!
… or you oould just use something like http://www.xmp3.net – no spam, and you can preview songs
If we are looking for .pdf do we just change (mp4|mp3|avi) to (pdf)?
Nice, but i’d rather use pillage.com or mp3raid.com
I searched the documentation up and down and still don’t get it:
- What does the dot in “index.of” do? Is this any different from “index of”?
- What are the square brackets around [snd] good for? snd doesn’t appear in the results.
- Pipe (|) for OR seems to work, is this documented anywhere?
- Also, I didn’t find any documentation that one can use brackets to group search terms. Do you have any references for this?
wow thats a good piece of information.Thanks for sharing it here.Between good 2 see u back
you know you didnt come up with this. sources anyone?
@lolocaust, Nice
That’s where I originally got this script. However, I modified the search terms to exclude “fake” sites like null3d.com and indexofmp3.com.
Linky
Although it seems Jimmy doesn’t update his site anymore, which is a shame.
[url=http://mp3frenzy.net]http://mp3frenzy.net[/url] uses google to search for full albums on blogs and file sharing sites such as rapidshare and megaupload. Better than the open directory search explained in the article.
http://jimmyr.com
Top-right, automatically does it for you…
http://www.g2p.org does this automatically for you.