November 02, 2009 by sharky
Open to the public since February 2009, Kickasstorrents.com currently indexes more than 2,550,000 torrents (although their site stats boast 9+ million throughout the lifetime of the site). Pageviews exceed 700,000 daily, with upwards of 150,000 visitors to the site on any given day.
Unique Features & Usability
Kickass offers a variety of site features that aren’t often found on other public torrent indexers (which is why we’re reviewing them), such as:
Verified Torrents
Look for the crown symbol next to torrents, this indicates these are verified (real working downloads, not fakes or scams). KickassTorrents currently indexes 412,584 verified torrents in all. Also worth noting, they have a strong team of devoted moderators who actively check the authenticity of new torrents.
‘Mouseover’ Comments Preview
Employs an ajax-mouseover feature on the browse pages for previewing comments in a torrent, without having to click-in to the details page for each one.
Torrent Details Page
Individual torrent detail pages incorporate an array of special features, including:
Real-Time Stats. Users are able to click the Trackers "Refresh" button, which will update the peerlist for the torrent in real time. If any new trackers have been added to the torrent, they will also be added to the list with corresponding peer info. Thus if the lights go out on TPB’s trackers, you won’t be stuck adding non-working trackers for the torrents.
uTorrent-Compatible tracker list. Simply click this link, and a list of trackers is displayed that can be easily copy/pasted into the tracker list through uTorrent.
Voting System. Logged-in members can Thumb-Up or Thumb-Down each torrent (Good/Fake). When combined with user comments, this system is a great method of deciding whether or not to download a particular torrent.
All-in-one Details. Torrent details page contains the torrent hash, files in the torrent, trackers list (& peers), comments, related torrents and description all on one complete page.
Extended Categorical Browsing/Grouping
We like this! KickassTorrents’ browse page contains not only sub-categories, but also offers specific grouping. For example, visitors can browse the TV category but view torrents as sorted by particular show.
The same can be applied to Music torrents, which can be sorted by specific artist name.
Direct HTTP Downloading
Offers direct http downloading for files in selected torrents (currently in beta) - KaT indexes more than 3,650 torrents ready for HTTP download, as seen in their direct download link. Soon to come is a feature for requesting direct downloads for individual torrents.
Last.fm and IMDb.com Integration
Music — Offers artist information pulled straight from Last.fm into each music torrent details page; including artwork, a biography and albums list.
Movies — For movie torrents, there’s an integrated IMDb.com feature that shows poster art, cast list and IMDb rating.
Sign Up / Log In
Visitors who register at KickassTorrents receive quite a few benefits over non-members, including:
Uploading — Non-members are not permitted to upload new torrents.
Bookmarking — Torrents can be bookmarked for later access as quick-links, and even managed (arranged) through user-created folders.
Personal RSS feeds — Aside from offering regular RSS feeds through torrent categories, logged-in members can also add specific torrents to their own personal RSS feed.
History — Here contains your site history; including torrents uploaded, downloaded, viewed and search queries.
Feedback — Ratings (good/fake) & comments can be applied to your downloaded torrents through the Feedback link without having to click-in on each individual torrent details page. A time-saving feature for active users!
Profile & Settings — A variety of customizations in regards to functionality and how KickassTorrents is displayed can be applied through profile & settings links.
A Friendly Growing Community
Torrent-related discussion can be found in KickassTorrents’ forum which includes general help, torrent requests, fake-torrent chat & topics related to individual torrents and releases. And be sure to check out their blog.
Our Synopsis:
Kickasstorrents.com was created by a team of professionals and is based on the latest technologies in web development and search. The layout is visually appealing, yet versatile - their search is not only thorough, but also the fastest we’ve ever come across. The site has a clean, sleek Web2.0 feel to it with no advertising whatsoever. Visitors don’t need to overlook the first 5 results in a search to get to the real torrents (as seen on some other sites). The overall design of KickassTorrents is intended to give torrenters enhanced versatility in being able to access torrents (and info on them) with as few mouseclicks as possible. For this, KickassTorrents is a true winner among public BitTorrent indexers.
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