Google has denied accusations of shutting down the cryptocurrency news website CCN.com by changing its Google algorithm.
CCN declared on June 10 that it was shutting down as it experienced a sharp decrease in online traffic after Google updated its algorithm. Google responded that the update would have a different impact depending on the site, with some being affected more than others.
CCN’s founder Jonas Borchgrevink stated on the website that: “ Google’s June 2019 Core Update rolled out on June 3th 2019 and CCN’s traffic from Google searches dropped more than 71% on mobile overnight,” he estimated that they lost 90% of their daily revenue due to this change.
“We have tried to find out why our stories are no longer visible on Google by asking for guidance in Google’s Webmasters Forum. While we appreciate the help of the experts from the Google Forum, their theories for why Google has decided to basically “shut down” CCN does not appear to be entirely accurate.” – said the founder.
Borchgrevink has also contacted other news sites regarding the Google update who also expressed concerns.
According to CCN, other crypto sites have had the same issue, with CoinDesk and Cointelegraph having experienced a drop of 34,6% and 21,1% respectively. U.today also suffered from the update:
Source: CCN
The CEO of The Block, Mike Dudas, said regarding the update:
“… We are troubled by the lack of transparency and warning by Google, who seems to have made a change to their algorithm that significantly impacted major cryptocurrency sites but have yet to explain why.”
Borchgrevink speculated that Google’s update was part of a crypto crackdown, but he also noticed that other non-crypto sites such as the UK’s tabloid Daily Mail were affected.
The founder said the CCN staff was offered the possibility of transferring to another journalistic website called HVY.com and the shutdown was not done to cover a lack of funding:
“You can ask any of our 60+ team members […] they are all offered the same rates over at hvy.com… I think they all have accepted the situation… we have not fired a single person [on] the team.”
Google has a very ambiguous relationship with cryptocurrency related advertising, as in June 2018 they banned all crypto advertising and then it revised the ban in September 2018 to allow some businesses to advertise on the condition that any cryptocurrency exchanges ads have to only target the US and Japan.
Since its launch in 2013, CCN has allegedly been ranked as the crypto news website with the highest global traffic rates, being among the top 800 most visited websites before the Google update.
Featured Image: Beta News
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