Softpedia is a Romanian website that indexes information and provides downloads for software. The site also indexes major technology, science, health, and entertainment news both from ticker servers and from in-house sources. As of December 2008, it is one of the top 500 websites according to Alexa traffic rankings,and the 10th most visited site by Romanians.The site was originally known as Softnews.ro, but was changed to Softpedia near the end of 2003.
Software categories are arranged hierarchically and are modeled after Windows filesystem paths, such as "C: \ Mobile Phone Tools \ Sony Ericsson." Users can sort by criteria such as the date of the last update, the number of downloads, or the rating. There are three viewing modes, normal, freeware, or shareware, which allows users to screen out certain types of software.As of May 2010, the site is also available in Spanish.
According to Softpedia, all software products and games they list are thoroughly tested. To check each one for evidence of viruses, malware, adware or spyware a variety of well known antivirus and antispyware products are used. Programs which Softpedia finds to be free of viruses, malware, adware, and spyware are given its "100% Clean" award; programs which are also freeware or open source are given Softpedia's "100% Free" award.
Softpedia has been accused of using a technique referred to as "Disguised Ads" to drive advertisement clicks from site visitors by making the most prominent features on the download page advertisements and not the application/file the site visitor was attempting to locate.