CCN Casts Doubt on Shutdown Plans as Google Appears to Correct Visibility

Cryptocurrency news outlet CCN.com (formerly CryptoCoinsNews) has U-turned on its abrupt decision to shut down, staff confirmed in an article on June 12.

CCN, which on Monday published a warning that it would cease operations immediately over an ongoing Google indexing debacle, says it is still working to understand changes in its online visibility.

As Cointelegraph reported, an update to Google’s algorithm allegedly produced an instantaneous 70% drop in traffic for CCN, with executives subsequently saying they had no choice but to abandon the project.

Now, support from Google has apparently changed the plans for a total shutdown, thanks to further unanticipated behavior from algorithms, which are reportedly flagging articles under CCN’s old CryptoCoinsNews identity.

“While we’ve been working in the dark, trying to get to the bottom of our massive visibility drop on Google, a friendly helper in Google’s forum mentioned that ‘CryptoCoinsNews.com’ — our previous domain — is reappearing in Google searches,” Wednesday’s update, written by CCN Markets director Jonas Borchgrevink, states.

Borchgrevink adds:

“That was a massive surprise for us as I personally requested a domain name change in 2017 from CryptoCoinsNews.com to CCN.com. Since that change, ‘Cryptocoinsnews.com’ was effectively absent on Google. Now it’s back and is inexplicably using recent 2019 articles from CCN.com. This is abrupt and confusing.”

Commentators had also claimed that all cryptocurrency media sites except one — Bitcoinist — had suffered as a result of Google’s update. However, Cointelegraph’s traffic was not actually affected by the Google Core Updated as previously reported.

The latest events do not guarantee a full return, the publication added, and attempts to correct the initial drop continue. CCN’s initial announcement of their closure had also noted that they would be moving the CCN team to HVY.com, a news platform for journalists.