Xdcc Search Engines

MIRC is millions of people chatting, sharing pictures, music, games, and files, connecting to each other via thousands of servers on hundreds of networks, all around the world.  Fifteen years after IRC was invented, there are several forms of internet chat - the original free unix server version has been modified for unix and other operating systems, and copywrited under various names - but they are all basically the same. Its only the bells and whistles that change.

A computer running irc software (ircd) is called an IRC "server". Your computer talks to the IRC server using software called an IRC "client". Clients send commands to, and receive information from, the IRC server. The way the user sees this is the ability to talk to other users in channels and thru private message, and send commands to the server, such as /join, /part, and setting user modes.

If a client is integrated into a web page or pop-up using java, its called a WebChat. Generally speaking, until fairly recently java clients were not used to access large IRC networks, but were used to access small, sponsored chatrooms.  Once connected to an IRC server, clients can connect directly to other users, and even send files to each other, with a process appropriately called DCC, or direct client to client.

SearchIRC's database of channels and networks can be accessed many different ways.

1.        Search:

·         Quick Search.This is the input box you see on the front of our home page, and under the SearchIRC logo on all other pages. It is a basic keyword search, similar to the type you use when you are searching for websites on Google - only our search brings IRC channel listings as results. Type in a word, or several words, and SearchIRC will list channels according to their relevance to those search words. For example, if you type the word, 'debian' the results will show all the channels named #debian and all the channels with 'debian' in their topic. Channels that display the word more than once will appear higher than channels that show the word one time, and channels with more users will rank higher than those with fewer users. If you type in more than one word, channels with matches for those words will appear higher than those with fewer of the words. If there are no results with all words, that means that no channels contain all of the keywords you searched for.

·         Advanced Search. SearchIRC's Advanced Search feature allows users to narrow their searches by permitting partial or exact matches for keywords, in channel titles or topics, or both, on all networks or a particular network, with a minimum/maximum number of users in the channel, and options to limit the number and color of the responses per page. The Advanced Search is particularly useful narrowing down results for channels that may be hard to find because they contain a commonly used word or phrase.

·         Tip Clicking on "Disable Color" in the upper right of the listings will not only disable color, it will also sort the results by the number of users in the channel.

2.        Directory:

·         Chat Directory lists active chat rooms by subject. Have you ever been frustrated trying to find a channel about a particular subject by keyword? You aren't alone. Users asked us to come up with a solution to help them find the channels they want - and here it is. SearchIRC's Chat Directory is an ever growing list of channels by subject. Channels can be submitted by users or by channel owners. The channel and its description is added to our directory - and here is the extraordinary part - to ensure every channel in our directory is active when you join it, we cross reference the directory with our search database, and ONLY show channels that are operational and contain at least 2 users on average.

·         Network Directory. Is a list of networks by category - Theme, Regional, Entertainment, Gaming, Family, etc. This list is growing as network administrators add their network to the proper category. You can find the Network Directory on SearchIRC's home page.

3.        Largest Channels

·         100 Largest. SearchIRC compiles every channel's average number of users. The average number of users is the number of users in a channel counted each time the bot visits the network, divided by the number of times the bot has seen the channel. ie, if you have 5 users the first time the bot sees your channel, 10 the second time, 20 the third time, and 5 the fourth time, the bot will add 5+10+20+5 and divide it by 4 to get an average of 10 users. The 100 channels on IRC with the highest average number of users is listed as our Top 100.