14 DAY TRIAL // Recounting the year that's almost passed has been a favorite activity recently, for search engines in particular. While Google gave us the wonderful insight that Rebecca Black was the fastest growing search of the year, even bigger than Google+, TorrentFreak had something else in mind.
As you've probably guessed, it has to do with BitTorrent. The blog put together a list of top searches in 2011. It only had access to one site, Kat.ph, but it's one of the biggest BitTorrent indexer out there.
The data is not representative for the entire BitTorrent network, but it is a solid indicator of general popularity. It is also a fairly good guide to what and how people are searching BitTorrent sites.
As far as the data is concerned, with millions of searches to draw from, the ranking should be fairly accurate and representative.
Since the list looks at the absolute volume of searches, it shouldn't be a surprise that the top queries are generic ones. In fact, the first specific search comes in at number nine.
The top BitTorrent search for 2011 is 'ita' followed by 'french' and '2011.' In case you're not overly familiar with BitTorrent lingo, the first two searches are used when looking for videos, movies in particular, in Italian or French or with subtitles in those two languages. '2011' is used to find content, again, mostly movies, that have come out this year.
This particular site seems to be very popular in Italy, since three of the top 10 searches are for localized content.
The first search for a particular item is 'Thor' at number nine, followed by 'Harry Potter' at number 12. Movies make up a big chunk of the top 50 searches, but TV shows are well represented as well, with Glee being the first, coming in at number 13.
The top 10 BitTorrent searches of the year:
1. ita 2. french 3. 2011 4. ita dvd 5. xxx 6. dvdrip 7. italian 8. kickasstor 9. thor 10. 720p