The legal action, initiated by the music industry group BPI on behalf of a variety of major labels, resulted in KickassTorrents (KAT.PH), H33T and Fenopy all becoming inaccessible directly in the UK.

As reported in our earlier article, the censorship encouraged an immediate interest in workarounds from users eager to regain access to the sites in question. Using the same Google tools, today we take a broader look at how UK search engine users reacted to the censorship.

Reaction to initial announcement that the sites would be blocked

Google data suggests that UK Internet users began to prepare for the blocking of the sites listed above as soon as news of the High Court order appeared on February 28. The search “top 10 torrent sites” became an instant smash hit.

General BitTorrent-related terms

As soon as the blockades were put in place, users showed a renewed interest in general BitTorrent related terms too. Searches for the term ‘utorrent’ and ‘torrent’ were boosted by about a third but as can be seen from the chart below, interest in ‘BitTorrent’ more than doubled over the previous week.

Workarounds

In our article last week we discussed how site-specific workarounds were drawing attention but as Google search data reveals, searches for the general term “proxy” also increased when the blocks were put in place.

Torrent-type alternatives

As the next image shows, what former KAT, H33T and Fenopy users were perhaps most concerned about were finding alternatives. As a result, Google searches for “torrent sites” went through the roof.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, interest in specific domains was boosted too. Taking the top domains in our Top 10 Torrent Site list as examples (excluding those already censored in the UK) we see the following results.

Torrentz (blue) and isoHunt (red)

ExtraTorrent (blue) and 1337x (red)

Conclusion

So as we’ve seen from the above, it’s pretty clear that the censorship of KickassTorrents, H33T and Fenopy has resulted in increased attention for workarounds and alternative sites. But then does it follow that there has been no effect on interest in authorized stores?

Since the search “torrent sites” attracted so much interest, let’s pitch that against searches for a couple of music and movie giants. As we can see, they also received a boost.

Netflix (red) – iTunes (blue) – Torrent Sites (yellow)

We have to keep in mind that the above charts only show relative search performance. They don’t show actual traffic to sites and they certainly don’t give a solid indication of subsequent unauthorized media downloads or indeed purchases from sites such as iTunes and Netflix.

However, the blocks clearly do have a short-term effect on people’s interests but we’ll have to wait for a while to see if that converts into cash for the entertainment industries or yet more traffic for torrent sites.

Or – as appears to be the case whether you block sites or not – both.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Unlike most other BitTorrent applications, Vuze has a search feature that returns results from torrent sites within the application itself so users don’t have to use their web browser. With the latest update of Vuze, KickassTorrents was added to the search.

Luckily, the owner of the site was contacted by Vuze beforehand to warn him about the traffic spike that was ahead, and to request some changes to the search template so it could be easily integrated into the client. This warning was indeed necessary, as the site received an additional 100,000 unique visits a day through Vuze.

These are impressive numbers indeed, but not that surprising if you consider that Vuze has more than a million active users that use the client at any given hour of the day. According to Vuze’s Director of Marketing Chris Thun, two thirds of these users utilize the built-in search functionality.

“Our search is a pretty popular feature with over 65% of monthly Vuze users leveraging the convenience and speed of Vuze search. My guess would be that we’re driving a fair amount of traffic to these sites,” Chris told TorrentFreak. Vuze users can download the torrents directly in the client, or visit the website the torrents are listed on.

Vuze’s integrated search currently uses Mininova and KickassTorrents. The latter replaced BTjunkie in the most recent update of the client. “We liked KickassTorrents’ clean design and layout, and liked the quality of the results coming from their API integration,” said Chris when explaining Vuze’s decision.

“BTJunkie is still an option for users, as it can be added to their default list of search sites simply by clicking ‘add/edit’ in the filters on the right side of the Vuze search results page. In fact, a wide variety of sites can be added to personalize the Vuze results,” he added, referring to the dozens of Vuze search templates that are available online.

There is no doubt that Vuze’s listing of KickassTorrents as the default search engine is a huge deal for the site. BTjunkie on the other hand wasn’t even aware of the fact that they were delisted. With millions of visits every day, a few thousand visits can go easily unnoticed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.