Solved: These Are The Most Popular Dark Net Markets!

Posted by: DeepDotWeb

November 16, 2015

One of the most commonly asked questions are “Which market is the most popular?” or “Which market popularity is rising?“, so i decided to share some of our internal & independent data which not generated by us, but showing the reality as its viewed by 3rd parties (Google in this case),  And by this,  giving a pretty accurate answer to these questions and providing a unique insight into the popularity / shifts in market popularity as they are represented by the actual masses random people in Google SERP’s and in contrary to direct visitors of this site or other dedicated DNM related discussion boards. And the data is:

1. Taken from Deepdotweb.com’s Google webmaster tools search analytics data.
2. The Shown number is of the total impressions on Google search results (Except for a small minority of double listing cases, means: 1 Google search showing a result from the site for the searched keyword = 1 Impression)
3. Using the longest time frame available in WMT: ~90 days from 14.8.15 to 7.11.15
4. For each market, showing all keywords containing the market name (i.e “Broad Match“, example: Nucleus, Nucleus market, How to buy from Nucleus etc…)
5. All keywords has worldwide average of first page ranking (according to WMT) which allows us to correlate the number of impressions to the general user interest and amount of worldwide number of Google searches for those keywords.
6. Need to note: Google WMT is not 100% accurate but the closest we can get to accurate.
7. Data has been compared to the actual traffic trends of the site from those keywords to verify its accuracy, but will not be included here.
8. This info is completely independent and is provided by Google from its internal data to provide site owners with “Google’s point of view of the site” and is based solely on google queries which qualify as valid.
9. This gives a MUCH better and current picture than the publicly available data on “Google trends”

And the most popular sites for the past 90 days and their trends are:

#1 – Agora

• Total Impressions: 458,367
• Number of keywords: 1000+  (Webmaster tools will not show more than 1000 keywords per query)
• Notes & Trends:  Defunct – Since around the time Agora admins decided to shut down, the decline in interest around this market is clear, although it still seem to generate few thousand searches per day this number is bound to decline as time passes, yet there is no doubt that Agora was the most popular market in recent times.

#2 – Abraxas

• Total Impressions: 407,892
• Number of keywords: 378
• Notes & Trends:  Defunct – Experienced a meteoric rise from nothing to full-on Agora popularity levels showing the mass migration to this market based only on its similar layout, Not very long after Agora admins decided to shut down, Abraxas admins exit scammed leaving us with nothing but speculation about their timing,  and the decline in popularity is already starting to show.

#3 – Alphabay

• Total Impressions: 242,418
• Number of keywords: 224
• Notes & Trends: While other market admins decide to exit scam, Alphabay is going strong from nearly nothing 3 month ago to a peak of around of around 10k impressions per day right after Abraxas decided to exit scam. Which poses it as the most popular active market currently.

#4 – Nucleus

• Total Impressions: 235,842
• Number of keywords: 283
• Notes & Trends: In a close fight and not far behind Alphabay, showing a pretty steady trend over the past 3 months with a few peaks and a slight rise in general interest after the recent Abraxas exit scam the only thing which differentiate Nucleus from Alphabay is the lack of upward trend, for now at least.

#5 – RAMP (Russian Anonymous MarketPlace)

• Total Impressions: 94,594
• Number of keywords: 163
• Notes & Trends: This veteran Russian only forum is still going strong and rising, but far behind the Nucleus and Alphabay, a very notable trend which we’ll encounter with the next markets as well – showing who’s really getting the most business.

#6 – Middle Earth

• Total Impressions: 84,138
• Number of keywords: 180
• Notes & Trends: Defunct – Assumed as exit scammed until proven otherwise, Middle Earth market is starting to lose its newly gained popularity to other markets.

#7 – Silk Road 3

• Total Impressions: 75,628
• Number of keywords: 70
• Notes & Trends: We can like or dislike the use of the silk road brand, but this market is still generating some interest although it doesn’t seem to increase much over the recent events, and the general number is rather low, which means that its not considered as a popular alternative.

#8 – Dream Market

• Total Impressions: 65,584
• Number of keywords: 138
• Notes & Trends: Great & stable market, been around since 2013, and only recently started gaining popularity, it will be interesting to check this chart in 3 months from now and see where it will be. According to the trend, users are considering it as a legitimate alternative to Abraxas / ME.

#9 – Silkkitie (Valhalla)

• Total Impressions: 48,279
• Number of keywords: 26
• Notes & Trends: The second non-english market in the top 10 list, recently turned English and rebranded as Valhalla – showing a mild growth in interest. (Note: the data is for “Silkkitie since there is not enough data available about “Valhalla”)

#10 – Dr. D’s Multilingual Market (Former Mr. Nice Guy)

• Total Impressions: 43,105
• Number of keywords: 139
• Notes & Trends: The controversial market which was recently re-branded and claimed to have changed ownership, and the only active market showing decline in interest over time (Note: the decline is not related to the rebranding as there is almost no data at all about the new name around 57 impressions total)

#11 – Crypto Market

• Total Impressions: 7,177
• Number of keywords: 142
• Notes & Trends: Far behind, we can find Silk road 3’s brother, Crypto market, showing a very negligible growth over time. (Note: showing data only for broad matches of “crypto market” since checking the term “crypto” will show everything related to cryptography and cryptocurrency as well)

#12 – Outlaw

• Total Impressions: 6,083
• Number of keywords: 38
• Notes & Trends: Very old and reliable market and one of my personal favorite markets, probably being held back by its UI. Will be interesting to review again once it changes. Regardless, showing mild growth following the recent exit scams.

#13 – DarkNet Heroes League

• Total Impressions: 2,649
• Number of keywords: 49
• Notes & Trends: This market is pretty new compared to the others. So a bit hard to measure.

#14 – East India Company (EIC)

• Total Impressions: 2,066
• Number of keywords: 95
• Notes & Trends: This market is pretty new compared to the others. But starting to show a positive trend since the recent exit scams (Abraxas & Middle earth). (Note: The data for this market is probably inaccurate, since the broad search term “east India company” will return various results completely unrelated to the market, hence making it harder to find and reducing greatly DeepDotWeb’s presence on the first page, hence, reducing its impressions (Google reports average position of 6 for the queries related to this market).

To Sum Up…

Contrary to the common belief, its pretty clear that what makes a market popular is not only the fact that it doesn’t exit scam while other does, but the same that makes every business popular, marketing efforts, features innovations, gaining media exposure and generating discussing, since as we can see – the older and more “quiet” markets are not necessarily the biggest, while the markets we hear about the most (whether its good or bad means nothing on the internet) will become the most popular over time.

Updated: 2015-11-16