KickassTorrents made a name for itself last year by implementing many new features that competitor torrent sites don’t have.
As a result the site’s traffic exploded and by the end of 2009 it got a well deserved entry in the list of most popular torrent sites of the year.
For 2010 KickassTorrents is planning to continue down this road by building a steady user base. The site now serves more than 500,000 searches every day and this figure is going up rapidly. On the development side the site’s operators haven’t been sitting still either.
One of the site’s newest features is a search trends section where users can browse through a listing of the 30 most searched for terms for any given day or month. Aside from the obvious habits, the feature reveals some interesting and noteworthy trends.
It might not come as a surprise that “Avatar” has been the most search for term in January and February, as it was the most popular search nearly every day. Perhaps a bit more surprising is the number two spot for the phrase “Valentines Day” yesterday, making it the 23rd most searched for phrase in February thus far.
Although “Valentines Day” might not be something you would expect the average BitTorrent user to be looking for, it does mimic this weekend’s box-office success of the film carrying the same name. Similarly, the Bollywood hit “My Name Is Khan” has been doing very well in recent days, scooping the number one spot (in the trends list) away from Avatar on Saturday.
Aside from these searches related to current events, there are also quite a few household phrases in the trends list. “French” and “Ita” for example are common search terms on most BitTorrent sites, used by French and Italians to find content in their native language. Both terms are in the top 5 nearly every day.
Other phrases are more time sensitive and only appear in the trends list on certain days of the week. TV-shows such as Heroes, Lost and 24 usually appear there a day after they air on TV, and disappear from it in the days that follow.
Interestingly, the term “aXXo” is still appearing in the top 30 list even though the notorious DVD-ripper released his latest film almost a year ago, long before KickassTorrents even existed. Old habits are hard to kick apparently.
The trends list is a useful resource for anyone interested in search trends that surface on BitTorrent and may serve as inspiration to others. It will be interesting to see how the list evolves over the months to come and how it compares to the top downloads charts we produce at the end of each year.
BitTorrent Search Trends February
