THE SYNAPSE, The website that SQ connects to (as reported by Little Snitch) is a famous meta-search engine and on that specific site's Help page they explicitly mention

"________.com is not a torrent site, torrent tracker nor a torrent search engine."

If an SQ user does a search in the site (using their browser) and simultaneously enters the same keyword in SQ, the results are the same.

so am i mistaken in understanding that SQ merely eliminated the need to open my browser and go to the site itself? It's true that SQ does offer a choice of trackers for the torrent the user clicks on but so does the website SQ connects to and the list is the same on the site.