Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2008
Written by Ernesto on December 28, 20082008 is nearing its end, time to make a list of the top 10 BitTorrent sites that got the most traffic this year. The Pirate Bay is out in the lead followed by Mininova and isoHunt. TorrentSpy shut down earlier this year and is the most notable absentee.
The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa, backed up by visitor reports from some of the site admins. If you’re looking for high speed downloads, a free Usenet trial might be a good alternative.
1. The Pirate Bay
It has been a good year for The Pirate Bay. The number of visitors spiked, despite efforts in Denmark and Italy to block access the site. Last month, The site celebrated its 5th anniversary, just after it broke the 25 million peers mark. At any given point in time, more than 25 million peers actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker.
Compete rank 885 / Alexa rank 117 / 2007 #3
2. Mininova
Mininova has seen a steady rise in visitors in 2008, and more than 3 billion torrents were downloaded from the site in the past 12 months. In addition to user uploaded content, the Mininova team has started to focus more on premium publishers with their content distribution platform.
Compete rank 1,225 / Alexa rank 79 / 2007 #1
3. IsoHunt
Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA and CRIA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. This year they partnered with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo, and just like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt added SSL encryption to the site, making it impossible for your ISP or the authorities to monitor users’ activities.
Compete rank 1,106 / Alexa rank 200 / 2007 #2
4. Torrentz
Torrentz.com, one of the oldest torrent sites around, celebrated its 5th anniversary in July. The site added a “verified torrents” feature this year, and inspired many other meta-search engines to do the same. Last month a “hacker” caused some problems after it took over the torrentz domain, but luckily this issue was resolved in a few hours.
Compete rank 2,039 / Alexa rank 220 / 2007 #4
5. TorrentReactor
TorrentReactor redesigned and optimized the site throughout 2008, which resulted in a significant increase in visitors. In addition, the TorrentReactor launched TorrentPrivacy, a service that allows BitTorrent users to download torrents anonymously.
Compete rank 2,150 / Alexa rank 532 / 2007 #9
6. Demonoid
After being forced to go offline following threats from the CRIA, Demonoid returned this April after 6 months of downtime. Since then it is business as usual, and most of the members returned quickly.
Compete rank 3,869 / Alexa rank 526 / 2007 #na
7. BTjunkie
In December 2007 BTjunkie was forced to leave their ISP following a takedown notice from the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This year there were no troubles, and the site continues to go strong.
Compete rank 3,762 / Alexa rank 625 / 2007 #5
8. SumoTorrent
In 2007, SumoTorrent quickly settled itself among the top torrent sites, and traffic continued to increase this year. The pop-ups and redirects are new though, and don’t make it one of the most convenient sites to browse.
Compete rank 4,110 / Alexa rank 1,019 / 2007 #na
9. BTmon
BitTorrentMonster, BTmon for short, debuted in 10th place last year, and managed to climb a spot. Other than that, there is not much news surrounding the site.
Compete rank 4,737 / Alexa rank 989 / 2007 #10
10. TorrentPortal
Not much news about TorrentPortal this year either, but for BitTorrent sites that is usually a good thing. Traffic seems to be stable, although the site is not growing as fast as the other BitTorrent sites in this list.
Compete rank 4,300 / Alexa rank 1,126 / 2007 #7
Honorable mention: TorrentSpy
In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.
In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic, but still, it managed to make out top 10 list last year. March 2008 TorrentSpy owner Justin decided to shut down completely, and in May his company was ordered to pay a $110 million fine, which it will appeal.
Previously: New George Michael Track Survives on The Pirate Bay
Next: Avoid Downloading Fake Torrents and Spam with Vertor
45 Responses
"At any given point in time, more than 25 million peers actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker." – What else did the pirate bay tracker think?
What about:
http://torrents.ru- Alexa Rank – 370
http://zamunda.net- Alexa Rank -1,873
http://puretna.com- Alexa Rank – 2,401
http://empornium.us – Alexa Rank – 2,688
What about them? Did you miss the part that mentioned this was "a list of the top 10 BitTorrent sites that got the most traffic this year" or something?
torrents.ru might have made it if it was public, this list is for public sites only though
tehconnection is the best tracker up right now, but private of course.
Kudos to TPB, even though public trackers are yucky. :p
It thought it needed spelling lessons so it signed up…..Cool or what?
Would not touch sumotorrent if you paid me….To many "plants"
I know that this is not particularly relevent to this topic but does anyone know what has happened to http://www.vcdquality.com/
Man, TPB has BAD ads which I don't like… Mininova is the best one for me :-)
There are two number nines and no number eight… oops.
There are ads on the internet?
/sarcasm
How weird, most domains are fueled by ads only.. I wonder you make such statement…
piratethe.net is the best site
thats not a bt site?
Firefox AdBlock?
Gotta love torrents.to :)
really wish torrentspy would come back.
Gotta love sharing…
Yes, Demonoid is a public tracker.
torrentportal doesn’t work, sumotorrent doesn’t work, torrent reactor doesn’t work, and the rest just index off the piratebay, while adding in more trackers that don’t work.
"6. Demonoid"
hmm i thought you said and I quote "this list is for public sites only though"
last time i checked they are closed for registrations.
True, but they have a public tracker, that's why it's included. Had to draw the line somewhere.
Cool, I use 7 of them quite regularly :)
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
TPB tops the list….w00t!
Good on you lads keep flying the flag =0)
*insert private sites are waaay better comment*
TPB FTMFW
10 sites but only 2 track torrents. Pretty crappy “hydra” isn’t it? What are those dozens of heads (the torrent indexes) good for if the’re all mounted on a single neck (if tpb goes down, the extra traffic is gonna crash all other trackers too).
Hey Lachtan
I would love an invite. pulldownhard@hotmail.com
Thanks in advance
pirate bay of course, it's a tracker+search
@ Walker1977
Demonoid may be closed for registration periodically, but anyone can download the newest torrents without registration, making it a public tracker.
I'd love one please Lachtan
treefur26@hotmail.com
Hi Lachtan I would love one also.
Thanks. butakeks at gmail dot com.
Why are there two number 9's?
calder at gmail dot com ; thanks in advance.
cheers Lachtan: atrialsystole at yahoo dot com
Great to see that demonoid is back up again, still, it's not that what I was used to before.
BTW I'm sharing some demonoid invites for free.
Gimme a reply if you want some..
good
I have always used Lynx textbrowser on bsd/linux/win32, cos I had a slow rx for years. Anyways I have a script that randomly follows some adlinks (clickthru's) on the sites I use most to help with ad revenue – seems fair :).
You should do a list of the top private trackers if possible.
Are these lists ever going to change?
I would love to see a “Top 10″ list for torrent sites that actually had trackers. Those meta search engines like mininova don’t really qualify as a “torrent site” in my opinion. If you follow that logic, then Google should have been on the top of this list.
This new one should make waves in 2009, just stumbled on it, and looks cool: http://www.coda.fm
Tooziq.com top 1 BDSM/FEtish tracker ever
try new torrent serch engine http://torrenturls.com/
This site is..wow..
I'll use this site a lot
yes, yes I know all this great torrents websites, but I think they have to much stuff there, every day people post lots of fake torrents, or torrents have no seeders. I found in internet new torrent website. They select only the best torrents – absolutorrent.com
every with description and picture, no torrents with less than 7 seeders.
Absolutorrent has only 4 categories: movies, music, series, games – they have there really cool stuff.
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