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In the secretive world of illicit file sharing, a site’s sudden absence inevitably causes a stir in Search. The most recent case of disappearing domains involves popular torrent tracker Demonoid. Searches on the site tripled this week after it vanished. Related queries on “demonoid shut down” and “what happened to demonoid” also cracked the Buzz.

Wired and Slashdot came forward with rumors that the Canadian Recording Industry Association was responsible for the site’s takedown. However, Idolator jumped in with a report that the downtime was due to a simple hardware failure.

Folks must have faith that Demonoid will be revived, ’cause searches on competitors didn’t take off. Queries on “torrent reactor,” “isohunt,” and “mininova” all dipped yesterday.

But that’s not to say torrents are losing steam in Search. Far from it. We checked this week’s data on popular torrents and found a mix of hot new shows, blockbuster movies, and big name musicians. Here are the top 20 torrent searches…