Seed count suspiciously low

[Marnes]

Hiya

I was wondering about an issue I've been seeing ever since I started using qbt.

I use btdigg, kickass.to and a few others as my search engines. I often find torrents with a seed count like 30 or more reported by the search engine, yet when I try to download it qbt struggles to find even 1 or 2. This isn't just a few torrents, it happens on a lot of them (I'd dare say a quarter of many). Everything network-related works and is turned on (DHT, peer sharing, tracker list, port forwarding, the whole shabang), so it's not that.

Do those search engines often exaggerate the seed count or is there some hidden problem here?

Tech-savvy user so don't hold back.

[sledgehammer_999]

You could try with a different bt client and see if it reports more seeds. Then the problem might be with qbittorrent or libtorrent.
Which OS and qbt version are you using? (if on linux state libtorrent version too)

[ciaobaby]

Do those search engines often exaggerate the seed count or is there some hidden problem here?

Yes they do and probably not.

About the only time you can be sure that a tracker count it close to being accurate is if it says 0 (and they even get that wrong sometimes).

Trackers cache peer IDs that have reported having pieces of the job so one peer may be counted several times (randomise ID)

[Marnes]

Oh hey Hammer

No, I think ciaobaby got it right... The caching (and peers counting themselves through looping trackers?) probably explains it.