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

59 Responses

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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’ ?

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