There are plenty of ways to discover new content on BitTorrent, but searching is still the preferred method for most people. What they are searching for should therefore give a good picture of what the latest trends are. Today we present the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010, a list of the 100 most searched for phrases and keywords on one of the most used public BitTorrent indexes this year.

Every year Google and other search engines produce a year’s end list of the most searched for phrases and keywords. Chatroulette and iPad were the fastest rising searches on Google and Kim Kardashian and Sandra Bullock were the top searches on Bing.

BitTorrent site Mininova also got a questionable mention in Google’s Zeitgeit list as one of the fastest falling searches in 2010, which follows the collapse of the site earlier this year. In 2006 things were going much better for the site as Mininova was one of the most searched for terms on Google.

Following this Zeitgeist trend we thought it might be a good idea to make a similar list for searches on BitTorrent indexes. Since BitTorrent searches are scattered across hundreds of sites it is impossible to get a full picture of what people search for on BitTorrent, but luckily one of the largest indexers agreed to cooperate.

KickassTorrents, one of the top 10 torrent sites in terms of visitors, was kind enough to share the most popular search terms of 2010 with us. With a few hundred million searches a year this data should give a clear indication of what people were looking for on BitTorrent in the last 12 months.

At the top of the list we find “Inception“, the movie that also appeared in our most pirated movies chart of the year. In addition, four other titles made it into the top 10; “Iron Man 2”, “Avatar”, “Despicable Me”, and “Clash of the Titans”. Movie related searches are clearly the most popular among users of the site.

Aside from movie titles we find “2010” in third place and “dvdrip” in seventh, two keywords that are also used to find movie related content. Another interesting keyword is “French” which shows that France’s anti-piracy law that went into effect earlier this year isn’t chasing many people away from BitTorrent. The top 10 is completed by the inevitable adult searches “xxx” and “porn“.

The first TV related search is “Dexter” which appears further down the list in 15th place. “Windows 7” is the first software related search keyword in 20th place, and for the first music related entry we have to go all the way down to “Eminem” which is listed as number 47.

A rather surprising entry in the top 100 is “axxo” in 17th place, since the last torrent file by the popular DVDripper was uploaded in March 2009. Axxo has been among the most popular search keywords on BitTorrent for years and it seems that old habits are hard to break.

Below is the full list of the 100 most entered search phrases on KickassTorrents. This list will be different on other BitTorrent sites, but we have to assume that the top searches will be popular on other indexes as well.

BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010