Hacking Google: Turning a Search Engine into an MP3 Downloader

Yes, that's right. You can take everyone's favorite all-purpose search engine and turn it into a web-crawling, MP3 ripping demon for you. The procedure itself isn't as hard as you would think either.

First a little bit of a primer on Google. The Search Engine itself has a bunch of extra bells and whistles beyond "AND", "OR", and "NOT" in defining your search queries. We're not going to go through all of them now (Although that may be a good follow up article soon.), but suffice to say that if you spend enough time using Google, there are other search strings you can use to further narrow down your searches. (Check Advanced Google Searching for more Information.)

Copy / Paste the code below into your Google search box:

Code:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"
last modified" +"parent directory"
+description +size +(wma|mp3) ""

Where is either the name of the band you're searching for music for OR the name of the song you're looking for.

That's the hack in a nutshell, but if you're interested to see how it works, keep reading. Let's take a few moments to dismantle it and see what is happening in the search query.

Code:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of"+"last modified" +"parent directory"

The first flag, -inurl restricts the Google queries without htm, html, and php pages, and has "index of" within the title. "Index Of" is a common flag that distinguishes website repositories, folder views of groupings of files on the internet. In a nutshell the first part of the query narrows down Google search results to pages you wouldn't ordinarily see, but nonetheless are logged and tracked by Google as it parses the net for new content.

Code:

+description +size +(wma|mp3) ""

In particular, this search will narrow down these repositores to include only sites with wma and mp3 files related to the BANDNAME or SONG you are searching for.

It should be noted though, that we at Haywire Hacking do not condone the illegal download of music: under federal law, if you own a copy of the correlating CD or published work of the author, you are entitled to a digital copy of the music