Well, duh: Mininova loses two thirds of its traffic after going legal

Filed under: News, Web services, P2P

Mininova, once the most popular torrent site on the web, has seen a monumental drop in traffic since it went legal last week. Without the lure of pirated movies, albums and software, folks are turning elsewhere for their torrent fix. (Hint, hint: not that we're condoning piracy, but feel free to use Download Squad's list of Mininova alternatives within the laws of your local jurisdiction.)

Just how bad are Mininova's numbers, though? Well, traffic is down 66% in the week since Mininova deleted more than a million torrents and went legal. Mininova was getting around 5 million visitors a day, according to TorrentFreak, but that's now dwindled to 1.8 million, and continues to decrease. Downloads on the site dropped from over 10 million a day to a measly 371,424. Searches took a hit, too, down from 10 million to 3 million. Sure, it was pretty obvious that Mininova was going to lose traffic when it lost the bulk of its content, but it's still shocking to see how far and how quickly the former most-visited torrent source has fallen.

The other side of the story, of course, will be the effect the well-known Mininova name has on legal torrents. It's too early to say, but my guess is that content creators using Mininova in its new role as a content-distribution channel will see at least a small bump in downloads, now that their work isn't lost in a sea of popular illegal content. Still, that's not much consolation to Mininova's many fans.

[via TorrentFreak]

Well, duh: Mininova loses two thirds of its traffic after going legal originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 06 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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