Top Torrent Sites Ranked by Google

Written by Ernesto on July 05, 2008 

BitTorrent’s popularity is growing every day. Despite the lawsuits that some of the larger torrent sites are involved in, they continue to grow traffic wise. Let’s take a look at how Google ranks the top torrent sites.

It is hard to make a definite list of the most popular BitTorrent sites. Over the years we’ve made quite a few lists, and reported some of the latest trends. Most lists we published were based on Alexa’s ranking, mainly because it was pretty much the only traffic source that was available. Recently, however, Google started to rank websites as well, including a traffic estimate.

So, let’s see how well Google does, and how their traffic estimation and ranking compares to actual traffic data and Alexa’s ranking respectively.

bittorrent google

One of the interesting features of Google’s site comparison is that it gives an estimation of the daily traffic when you’re logged in on a Google account. The data used for the traffic statistics comes from Google analytics, consumer panels, and other third-party market research.

The traffic data seem to be quite accurate, for some sites at least. The daily (absolute) unique visitors for Mininova, for example, is estimated to be slightly above 2 million a day, which matches with real traffic stats we got from the Mininova team.

As we look at the graph below we can clearly see that Mininova is in the lead judging by the number of visitors, followed by The Pirate Bay. isoHunt and Torrentz compete for the third place. After these four sites there is a huge gap to other BitTorrent sites such as BTjunkie, TorrentReactor and TorrentPortal.

It is interesting to see how many similarities there are between Google’s ranking, and the daily reach according to Alexa.

alexa bittorrent

The regional differences in popularity of the sites are also worth mentioning. The Pirate Bay, for example, is more popular than Mininova in the US, and especially in Sweden. Torrentz, on the other hand, does really well in India, while isoHunt has a relatively large fanbase in Japan.

Overall it seems that BitTorrent sites are still growing, especially The Pirate Bay, since they nearly doubled their traffic in a year. This is pretty much in line with the growth in the number of peers on The Pirate Bay trackers, which went from 5 to well over 10 million in the last 12 months.

Previously: BitTorrent Tracker Hosting Illegal Says Dutch Court

Next: Canadian MP: Three Strikes Law is Idiotic

62 Responses

1 Jul 05, 2008 at 13:43 by www.eZee.se

Mininova really kicks ass, most of us find ourselves getting content from TPB but that was found via mini..

2 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:00 by Faith

Ah, well, I still think the pirate bay is the best, because they kind of rebel:) Long live TPB!!

3 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:05 by 挑戦界嫌動憂慮最業帯電

Public torrentsites are inseure.

http://www.420chan.org

4 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:06 by manoj

i think mininova is the best.
in india i think mininova is popular

5 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:16 by John Jones

Yey! Go Google Go!

JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi

6 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:22 by xxx

“Overall it seems that BitTorrent sites are still growing, especially The Pirate Bay, since they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah.”

“[...] doubled their traffic in a year”

;)

7 Jul 05, 2008 at 14:23 by typonazi

“since they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah”

you mean year?

8 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:06 by Gavin

“since they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah”

I prefer yeah

;)

9 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:11 by Vince

YEAH BABY YEAH!!!

10 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:12 by dt

mininova sucks! pirate bay all the way! particularly for all the wonderful users at the pirate bay who post comments. COMMENTS! COMMENTS! COMMENTS!

11 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:29 by TehStalker

I like Piratebay, just look at their legal section :D

but Powerbits is pwn, largets private nordic tracker!

12 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:35 by Asmodeus

Public trackers suck bigtime. If necessary and no other choice, then use Demonoid.

13 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:46 by #YLS#

I’d never heard of torrentz before.

It’d be nice to see Windows Live showing a search graph on torrent sites…

It’d go like this… “No one touches torrent sites because there evil and used by terrorists and child offends!!!!”

14 Jul 05, 2008 at 15:48 by Anonymous

public trackers suck!!!!!!

15 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:08 by anon2

be careful google, you could be the next ones in court. after all, you are listing torrent sites in search results!! now, wouldn’t that be interesting!!

16 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:11 by Crynsos

…especially The Pirate Bay, since they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah.

Yeah, seems like many people already saw it, but I just had to mention it again…

But about the Google results, I don’t know anymore how accurate Alexa’s were before their “update”, but it’s good to see another good source appeared and it’s even better to see that the torrent site statistics are still growing…

But another comment: People have to think about this: Mininove as well as isoHunt and Torrentz all are only indexes, The Pirate bay is the only site, which is high up in the statistics AND maintains trackers as well…

17 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:25 by ww

The problem is that of the top 4 sites listed, only one, The Pirate Bay, operates an open tracker. (Isohunt’s Torrentbox tracker is unavailable due to US pressure.)

The other sites simply leech off TPB’s tracker. Not cool.

“isoHunt has a relatively large fanbase in Japan”

Isohunt’s owner resembles a Japanese celebrity I’ve seen. Maybe that’s part of the attraction.

18 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:33 by Revolting as we speak

isoHunt also has trackers last I knew, they just have been blocking US ip ranges.

19 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:39 by Chris

torrentz ftw.

20 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:44 by stuckmoto

Are you crazy? Use a public tracker?
Not in a million years, unless you like receiving copyright infringement e-mails.

There are SOOO many other options.

21 Jul 05, 2008 at 16:51 by Xplicit

i h8 public sites, nowadays I just use private trackers because everything is faster and safer on them. on the site that I use we have hundreds of seedboxes in use 24/7 and I have one as well. however for public stuff I always use mininova.org as I am not a big fan of TPB

22 Jul 05, 2008 at 17:00 by #YLS#

For those who save private is better then public for security reasons… Well not really?

Public maybe be easy to locate but ultimately Private sites run their own Trackers, sites that run trackers are more likely to be raided…

And on private trackers usually registration leaves a trace back to your email, your real life etc, providing more solid evidence.

So in short it’s more about preference…

23 Jul 05, 2008 at 17:09 by Tilo000

Long live TPB!!

It’s the most amazing community, tracker and defender of basic human rights…

24 Jul 05, 2008 at 17:14 by #YLS#

Anyone else seen this silly cartoon on spying and wiretapping?

http://www.markfiore.com/spies_who_love_you_0

25 Jul 05, 2008 at 17:15 by Johnny

If they double their traffic in a ‘yeah’, how much traffic will they get for a ‘hell yeah’ ?

26 Jul 05, 2008 at 17:46 by Anonymous

> “Public torrentsites are inseure.”

All torrent sites are insecure.

Private sites keep much more detailed logs. They log everything you download and how much you upload. Public sites don’t.

> “(Isohunt’s Torrentbox tracker is unavailable due to US pressure.)”

It’s available and completely usable to the non-American world.

27 Jul 05, 2008 at 18:46 by Anonymous

Spaaaaaaaaaaaam …

28 Jul 05, 2008 at 18:51 by Anonymous

I am not very good at website design, but I have attempted to create a pledge for people who are willing to struggle for a cause, so that there might be a chance that we could take action collectively.

It is at http://www.28chan.org/pledge.php

What do you people think?

29 Jul 05, 2008 at 19:47 by zarathustra

“definite”?

ITYM ‘definitive’…

HTH =]

30 Jul 05, 2008 at 19:49 by Anonymous

definite: precise
definitive: authoritative

31 Jul 05, 2008 at 20:58 by Anonymous

private. what. what. cd?

32 Jul 05, 2008 at 21:04 by ship.baywords.com

New statistical and budget data is available at http://ship.baywords.com on the “Humanitarian Value of ‘Warez Piracy’”

http://SHIP.BayWords.com

please leave a note to them if you know of any other validated budgets for humanitarian relief and the value claims of crimes against humanity.

33 Jul 05, 2008 at 22:05 by Andrei

What about Demonoid? It used to be one of the top. http://echeblahblah.blogspot.com/

34 Jul 05, 2008 at 23:07 by X

Last paragraph:

“Overall it seems that BitTorrent sites are still growing, especially The Pirate Bay, since they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah.”

should be year, not yeah ;)

35 Jul 05, 2008 at 23:10 by Jeff

Private sites are not necessarily
safer than public ones – as seen with
the EliteTorrents takedown, it all
started with an infiltration by an
MPAA shill (or should that be mole?)

36 Jul 05, 2008 at 23:24 by Anonymous

noobs don’t know how to turn off google analytics and it shows how many
stupid people use public trackers.

long live the stupid people.

37 Jul 05, 2008 at 23:48 by Anonymous

mininova ftw

38 Jul 06, 2008 at 00:35 by Anonymous

If you people want to sign a pledge to declare your intentions of wanting to be part of a struggle to reform copyright law, here it is:

http://www.28chan.org/pledge.php

39 Jul 06, 2008 at 00:39 by Ph0X

lol theres like 20 people who already said it, AND HERES ANOTHER!

double in a YEAH!

40 Jul 06, 2008 at 01:58 by Todd

I like the design of Mininova, so I used to use them, but lately I’m finding lots of torrents on there with trackers I can’t communicate with. I don’t know if they’re blocking they US or just dead trackers, but it’s enough of a nuisance that I switched to TPB.

41 Jul 06, 2008 at 02:32 by DarksideRG

Some of the best releasers on the net and most trusted, aXXo (movies), tqw (ebooks), and mazuki (appz). All have the same home site, darksiderg(dot)com

I for one have never got and infect file or fake release form there!

42 Jul 06, 2008 at 03:20 by Adonai

Comments are a must for good torrent sites – one of the reasons I stopped using Torrentspy a year or more before it went offline. The comments for each torrent at TPB are a good way to see if the content is good or a fake/infected.

43 Jul 06, 2008 at 04:20 by Izumi-sensei

Proposals for action:

These proposals for action are at my blog so that people can comment on them more easily:
http://izumi-sensei.blogspot.com/2008/07/proposals-for-action.html

File-sharing is simply not something for which people should be punished. When you have bought your CD, it should be YOURS, and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. Copyright is an infringement of basic property rights – it puts restrictions on what you can do with YOUR property. Non-profit file-sharing should simply be allowed, and commercial file-sharing should be allowed 15 years after the publication of the original work.

The following are two proposals for action:

1. Civil disobedience. We need to do this in public: hand out CDs for free in public. If the police reacts, and arrests people, then public sympathy would more likely be on our side.
2. Protests, campaigning, letter-writing. I do not mean the U.S. Congress or any other part of government. I mean the multitudes of institutions or people who simply think that file-sharing is somehow is a problem, and do not even consider the people who oppose copyright law. We need to persuade the small people first before we tackle the big institutions.

44 Jul 06, 2008 at 07:31 by stillkicking

People from Boston say yeah. The rest of us say year. People from Eastern Canada of Scandanavian decent put the letter y in front of a lot of words. So they see the doctor about a year ache. Once a year. Except if they are passing though Boston where the see the doctor about a year ache once a yeah.

45 Jul 06, 2008 at 07:32 by sarkar

looks like india and us are competing for the #1torrent users spot.

46 Jul 06, 2008 at 13:19 by Anonny

“… they nearly doubled their traffic in a yeah.”

You are a New Yorker, right!?

47 Jul 06, 2008 at 14:09 by Ben

Now it’s back up and running you can’t beat a bit of Demonoid ;-)

48 Jul 06, 2008 at 14:46 by TS

One main reason for isohunt being popular in Japan is that it indexes a lot of anime and hentai material.

Indian people are still learning about torrents so they use torrentz more.

Piratebay is particularly up due to their rebellious nature while Mininova tops because it indexes the best torrents and the most torrentz.

I think Piratebay has something to do with their popularity in Sweden as they are from Sweden.

49 Jul 06, 2008 at 18:37 by milo

Torrentz.com is a metasearch engine so basically you end up going to a Mininova or thePiratebay website anyway.

Also if you are scared of giving out emails use
guerrillamail dot com for registration, this is a temporary email service.

50 Jul 06, 2008 at 21:43 by IVAN

JAJA…torrents sucks, this protocol is not for sharing file, it is a way for leeching!! It doesn’t work if I want download something rare or not popular.
I hope this protocol died some day.

51 Jul 06, 2008 at 22:16 by Sweden

The only reason TPB don’t kick higher in that graph is because of the fact that it’s mainly and mostly (in percentage) used by Swedish people, since it’s a Swedish project (this is why a LOT of the movies are uploaded with SWESUB’s as standard). And Swedens population is only close to 9 million – so in compete with countries like US and India, we don’t have a fair chance.

Personally though, I’m pissed off at that “loder” bot at TPB for stealing non-public scene releases from the private trackers and uploading them at the TPB. F*ck you, fake-user.

52 Jul 06, 2008 at 22:58 by Kos

Loder is a great account that upload lots of good releases each day.

The only problem is the moviex tracker that only let people seed to members of the site. But it’s easy to remove and I’ll bet a lot of people do it.

Btw:
when you download torrents from piratebay most of the peers you’re connected to will be from America. Especially after some of the US sites went down.

53 Jul 07, 2008 at 02:56 by Dynamic Torrents

{{{NEW PRIVATE TRACKER}}}

No fakes
Scene release
Fast downloads

Or join uploaders/mod groups

http://dynamictorrents.radixhosting.com

54 Jul 07, 2008 at 07:43 by johndoe

whatever happened to supernova.org…four or five year ago now? mininova is making it proud;)

55 Jul 08, 2008 at 03:00 by Bisaya Anonymous

Top torrent sites? Bah. When any torrent site wins, EVERYBODY wins. Period. Sure, stroke TPB’s, Mininova’s, Torrentz’s and Demonoid’s egos – all I want (and what we really need) are our torrents. Whoever at the top is usable by me and you and everybody is happy and everybody wins.

Even media producers should win.

56 Jul 08, 2008 at 11:48 by Balkan

The Best Balkan Film

See More :

http://www.yubalkan.com/YuBalkan/index.php

57 Jul 08, 2008 at 14:00 by -.-

superfundo is the best no virus or anything!!! fast downloads!

58 Jul 08, 2008 at 16:14 by Ashkin Superfundo GM

Superfundo will never be at the top because Global Mods & Mods control this site for the worse.
Superfundo will never move with the times,because I won’t let it.
With power hungry self opinionated
Global Mods like me superfundo will always remain 3rd rate.Hey Yarman! Who is the real Admin at superfundo You or Me? Come on be a man and own up-oops did I say man.

59 Jul 31, 2008 at 03:31 by JD

Ahhh… yes…
And soon, since their low profile is ruined, Mininova will also be gone…

60 Jan 07, 2009 at 01:42 by Ch0de

ahh dude mininova can burn in hell for all i care it made my other comp. crash and now im getting all these viris detections like every five min. so Piratebay all the way!!!

61 Jan 27, 2009 at 10:44 by Gaurav

Yeah MiniNova Rules

My Blog: http://www.askgaurav.blogspot.com

62 Jan 30, 2009 at 02:44 by PowerProNet

Hello

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