The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents have remained the two most popular file-sharing sites for years now, but with all the recent downtime, domain seizures and changes, which of the two sites is currently ranked No. 1 in popularity?

It has certainly been a rough ride as of late for The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents, the world's two largest file-sharing services. The Pirate Bay, long ranked as the world's number one file sharing service, was raided by Swedish authorities on Dec. 9 of last year. Its servers were seized and the site went offline, with many wondering if and when it would return. In late December, signs of a resurrection appeared, and on Jan.31, the site returned, fully functional at a new domain.

In the interim, other file-sharing sites picked up the slack. Pirate Bay clones and copies such as oldpiratebay.org popped up, but it was The Pirate Bay's biggest rival, Kickass Torrents, which catapulted into the number one position and was crowned the most popular torrent site in early 2015.

Kickass was not without its share of hosting issues as well, however. In December 2014, the site switched domains to a Somolian server in what was reported as a routine domain change. On Feb. 9, however, the site was listed as banned, and after a brief downtime returned to its previous host located in Tonga, where it has remained up and running since. Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay return is still plagued by hosting issues, resulting in an extended outage as recently as Feb.13.

With both sites up and running for the better part of February, the question remains, who now holds the crown as top file-hosting site on the web? The answer is not so easy to determine, however. With all the domain name changes, determining top dog is not as clear a process as it normally would be. While a recent report claims Kickass is currently tops, no clear data source or time frame is cited.

The Alexa web analytic rankings for the sites for the two current domain names appear to show The Pirate Bay as the clear winner, as thepiratebay.se shows a global rank of 216, as opposed to Kickass.to at 1,004. But a closer look shows things may not be what they seem. Alexa also shows kickass.so, Kickass Torrents' domain name that was recently banned on Feb.9, as having a global rank of 67. That's because Alexa averages traffic over a period of time to determine rank. The rankings of The Pirate Bay and Kickass in early 2014 were 79 and 103, respectively, so clearly the most current Alexa rankings certainly do not give the real picture.

So whether Kickass has actually usurped The Pirate Bay due the long outage of the latter site is not yet evident. Extended disappearances by file-sharing sites can result in a loss of users, as file sharers form new habits and lose trust in sites that continually go offline. Demonoid, once one of the largest torrent sites in the world, lost much of its popularity due to an extended downtime, and though it relaunched last year, it hasn't yet returned to its former standing.

Besides topping The Pirate Bay in relative stability, Kickass has several other things going for it. Many file sharers find the user interface and design of Kickass to be more appealing and user friendly than that of The Pirate Bay. Recent changes in Google's search policy to reduce search results from illegal file-sharing sites could mean a loss for The Pirate Bay which, as the top torrent site, likely received the highest volume of default traffic from such results compared with other torrent sites.

In addition, former The Pirate Bay moderators who were not asked to return to its current incarnation have warned users that unverified torrents on the newly resurrected site might be unsafe, containing viruses and malware. For The Pirate Bay to remain number one, it needs to regain users trust in the stability of its online presence as well as in the security of its content.

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