The Pirate Bay is now the most-visited file-sharing site on the Internet, taking over the lead from prominent one-click hosting sites such as 4Shared and Mediafire. After a spectacular rise in the early years of this decade cyberlockers are quickly losing ground, while BitTorrent sites continue to grow. This shift in balance can be attributed to the Megaupload shutdown, and the changes in the cyberlocker market that followed.

Less than two years ago we published an overview of the most used file-sharing sites, covering both BitTorrent and traditional cyberlockers.

At the time one-click download sites were beating BitTorrent sites by a landslide. However, the cyberlocker business changed dramatically following the Megaupload shutdown last year and now the tables have turned.

The Pirate Bay, ranked sixth last time, has become the most-used file-sharing site. While the infamous BitTorrent site certainly gained some new visitors in recent months, it mostly owes its number one spot to the traffic decline of several major cyberlockers.

The most likely explanation for the traffic drop at these sites is the Megaupload shutdown. As covered extensively in the past, many cyberlockers removed their affiliate plans, disabled public sharing or implemented other measures to keep pirates at bay.

The result is a major shift in traffic patterns, with both winners and losers. Quite a few familiar names have fallen from the list, including RapidShare, FileServe and Hotfile. Others such as Uploaded and Putlocker picked up new visitors.

The overall pattern seems to be that BitTorrent sites have regained some of the “market share” they lost earlier. Half of all sites in the file-sharing top 10 are BitTorrent related, compared to only two in 2011.

With six newcomers in the list, it’s clear that the file-sharing ecosystem has been shaken up quite a bit.

Below is the full top 10 of the most-visited general purpose file-sharing sites that are available in English. We used several traffic comparison and analytic tools to compile this list, including Compete, Quantcast and Alexa. The alexa rank is shown in the table below, as well as the # in the 2011 list.