In a peculiar twist, the popularity of Popcorn Time, the popular media streaming application, has now reached a new height. Typing the word “popcorn” in Google brings up the website as the first search results, with sites related to the actual food itself ranked lower. The way Google arranges their search results is not publicly known, but it is known that it has a lot to do with the relative popularity of a website, so this certainly says a lot.
The service is even more popular than the Pirate Bay in terms of its popularity among film pirates, and it’s likely going to see even more attention in the future if its developers keep updating the website with new features and content. And of course, if they also manage to resist the various attempts to take them down.
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the service ever since it started, with many media companies actively trying to take down its main site, and Cartoon HD has been “enjoying” a similar fame. But so far, it looks like Popcorn Time is here to stay, as media companies have been having a difficult time taking it down and getting it to stay down as well.
Its popularity has grown so much that people jokingly refer to it as “Netflix for pirates” now, and it’s likely going to get even more popular. The site keeps information about its users private and it’s not easy to guess how many people are using it on a daily basis, but these Google search rankings are definitely a strong indication that it’s seriously popular.
Google has been ranking the site quite highly for the past few weeks. We don’t know if this is a clever SEO strategy by the administrators of the website or just a natural result of its popularity, but it’s a funny scene in any case.
It’s also worth noting that these results might not be reproducible for everyone out there. Google are known to alter their search results based on each user’s preferences and search history individually, so some people might see other results when searching for “popcorn”. Particularly those who’ve searched for foods frequently before, while they haven’t had much activity in the area of films and media in general. On the other hand, the report has been confirmed by multiple people all across the globe, and we’ve personally seen it ourselves, so it’s genuine at the moment. It’s possible that Google’s rankings might change at some point over the next few weeks, however.