Google responds to cryptocurrency blacklisting allegations

CCN.com, a popular cryptocurrency news site, has recently announced that it is discontinuing all operation. The news site reported that their readership numbers have decreased because of an update in Google's algorithm. To this, Google responded that the effects of the update on websites might be variable. A Google representative, in defense, wrote in an email that the search engine frequently updates its systems according to the fast-paced internet environment and aims at giving relevant results to those searching the web.

"With any update, some sites might not perform as well as in the past, while other sites might perform better." 

CCN's founder Jonas Borchgrevink accused Google by reporting that CCN's traffic dropped down after the update on June 3, 2019. Borchgrevink said: 

"Our search traffic dropped by more than 71% overnight. With that, we saw a drastic decline in ad revenues. This happened just after June 3 and has been consistent after. None of our recent articles drew any significant traffic from Google this past week. We have never experienced that before." 

According to him, the fall was "more than 90%."

Popular media site in crypto industry The Block faced minor effects from Google's update. Mike Dudas, founder, and CEO of The Block said:

"The Block's traffic was up 70% MoM [month-on-month] in May vs April, and we continue to see record traffic despite the Google Core Update, which had a minor negative impact on our traffic. Fortunately, we are not SEO dependent and receive direct traffic and referral traffic from Twitter and crypto partners that has helped us continue to grow. We also run a lean team and have a revenue model that isn't dependent on Google-fed low-CPM ad-based traffic. Rather, our primary model is our premium Genesis research and analysis product. That being said, 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."

Coindesk, on the other hand, witnessed an insignificant outcome from the Google update. While Yuval Gov, co-founder of Cryptopotato, stated that the update caused more difficulty than usual. Gov said:

"After every Google update, we see changes, usually in positive progress. This time we were negatively affected and quickly discovered we were not the only affected crypto site."