Google has removed all links to Bayfiles, the file-hosting service created by the Pirate Bay's founders. For reasons unknown, people searching for the site can no longer reach it through the search engine. The site's operators are puzzled, but say that the change has very little impact on visitor numbers.

Nearly three years ago Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde launched Bayfiles, a new file-sharing venture.

The site has been growing ever since and has accumulated a steady user base. Instead of using P2P transfers, Bayfiles users can upload and download large files directly from the site.

Besides some issues with their payment provider, Bayfiles hasn’t run into any significant problems to date. However, very recently the site suffered a setback after it became impossible to reach through Google.

Without explanation, Google wiped all of the tens of thousands of Bayfiles links from its search index. The search results below show that the file-hosting service is no longer featured as the top result and a more specific search reveals that all of the site’s URLs have been wiped.

No Bayfiles in Google



TorrentFreak spoke with the Bayfiles team who have no clue what’s going on. Their robots.txt allows the site to be indexed and other search engines such as Bing do so just fine.

“Perhaps they don’t like filehosting services that can’t be cut off from their payment provider, as we no longer have paid accounts,” the Bayfiles team suggests.

Bayfiles never had a lot of traffic from search engines so there is no major impact on visitor numbers. Still, it’s never good to have your entire service removed by Google.

The most likely explanation is that Google found Bayfiles guilty of some sort of violation for which the site has been removed from Google as a penalty. What type of violation that might be remains a mystery to the site’s operators.

Penalty or not, Bayfiles will continue to serve files all around the world, free of charge.