2007 is almost over so it's time to make a list of the Top 10 "public" BitTorrent sites getting the most traffic this year. Mininova is out in the lead followed by IsoHunt and The Pirate Bay. TorrentSpy, the most popular BitTorrent site last year, has dropped down to 6th place.

The list is based on Alexa’s traffic rank, and this data was backed up by reports from quantified sites on quantcast and traffic reports from some of the site admins.

Here is the list, as of December 29, public BitTorrent sites only.

Without a doubt the most visited BitTorrent site. In November, Mininova reached a milestone by entering the list of the 50 most visited websites on the Internet.

Alexa rank: 46

IsoHunt continued to grow this year. In September they were forced to close their trackers to US traffic because of the issues they have with the MPAA, but this had no effect on the visitor count.

Alexa rank: 143

The Pirate Bay has been in the news quite a bit this year and remains not only the most used BitTorrent tracker, but also one of the most visited BitTorrent sites. At the moment they are fighting with IsoHunt for the second place in this list.

Alexa rank: 147

Torrentz is the only “torrent site” in the top 10 that doesn’t host .torrent files. Several improvements and new features have been introduced over the past year such as a comment system, private bookmarks and a cleaner layout.

Alexa rank: 160

BTjunkie was one of the fastest risers last year and continued to grow throughout 2007. Last month they were, like many others, forced to leave their ISP (LeaseWeb), but the transition to a new host went smoothly and didn’t result in any downtime.

Alexa rank: 445

TorrentSpy was the most popular BitTorrent site of 2006, but dropped to sixth place due to legal issues with the MPAA. To ensure the privacy of their users, TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US, causing their traffic to plunge.

Alexa rank: 461

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year, but that probably is a good thing. Like most other sites they have grown quite a bit in 2007.

Alexa rank: 481

It’s quite a surprise to see GamesTorrents in the list of 10 most popular BitTorrent sites of 2007. This Spanish BitTorrent site had a huge dip in traffic earlier this year but managed to secure 8th place.

Alexa rank: 583

TorrentReactor.net has been around for quite a while, four years to be exact, and is still growing.

Alexa rank: 604

BTmon was one of the newcomers in 2006, and it is the youngest BitTorrent site in the top 10 this year.

Alexa rank: 673

Honorable Mention: Demonoid

For being one of the most visited BitTorrent sites until they pulled the plug in November.

Top 5 Newcomers

SumoTorrent launched this April and quickly became one of the more popular BitTorrent sites.

Alexa rank: 1021

SeedPeer launched in September and is formerly known as Meganova.

Alexa rank: 2924

A BitTorrent meta-search engine, launched in January.

Alexa rank: 2987

Launched a year ago, it got a serious traffic boost earlier this year.

Alexa rank: 5304

BitTorrent.am is also indexed by Torrentz.com, and was launched early 2007.

Alexa rank: 6903

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is not perfect. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.