Major Crypto Media Site CCN Shuts Down, Cites Google Update for Loss of Search Visibility
This article has been updated to correct that Cointelegraph’s traffic was not affected by the Google Core Update as previously written.
Top cryptocurrency media site CCN is shutting down today, June 10th, according to an announcement on their website.
The post, written by Jonas Borchgrevink, director and founder of CCN Markets and Hawkfish AS, states that the reason behind the closure is a large drop off in traffic from Google searches following a June 3 Google Core Update. Borchgrevink writes that the crypto news site’s traffic fell over 71% on mobile overnight.
The founder notes that while traffic levels have been low in the past, the addition of new members to the team means that they cannot continue to operate in these conditions on advertiser revenue. The post cites data from Sistrix.com, noting that crypto news site CoinDesk saw a 34.6% drop, while CCN also notes that Cointelegraph reportedly saw a 21.1% drop on mobile as well. However, data shows that Cointelegraph did not in fact see a drop in traffic following the June update.
Borchgrevink states that they will be moving the CCN team to HVY.com, a news platform for journalists.
In the post, Borchgrevink also notes that not only crypto sites have been affected by the Google update, adding that specifically British tabloid The Daily Mail has seen a large drop in visibility as well.
Some online have speculated that “clickbait” headlines are behind the loss of visibility for The Daily Mail, which reportedly lost half of its organic website traffic.
However, the announcement notes that the reasoning behind certain sites losing visibility is not able to be determined:
“Unless someone – anyone – who actually worked on the June 2019 Core Update at Google explains what is going on, all we can do is to ‘guess, speculate, and experiment’ as far as our bank accounts allow us to.”
CCN was founded six years ago, originally going by the name CryptoCoinNews before rebranding to its current moniker.
Borchgrevink writes:
“If Google thinks that CCN, all of a sudden — remember, literally overnight —, is bad, then why not give us the chance to understand the why and give us a way to change before any major update. Instead, we are kicked in the teeth overnight with zero knowledge of what we have done wrong, impacting a team of 60+ people. 6 years of work is evaporated.”
CCN’s post ends with a list of demands to Google, including giving three-month’s notice of expected changes from Google Core Updates, explaining what a company can do to change if it falls into a risk zone for losing traffic, and having national governments create apolitical task forces to inspect search engine updates for “ the conservation of our democracies, our Freedom of Speech, our Freedom of the Press, and our Freedom of Information.”