Yesterday, June 11th 2019, Something Decent reported that CCN.com was shutting down. The reason for the shutdown, as reported by them, was due to a drastic drop in traffic.

The drop in traffic, once again reported by CCN, was caused by a dramatic change in Google’s search ranking algorithm.

Today, June 12th 2019, in a bizarre turn of events, CCN founder, Jonas Borchgrevink, announced the return of the leading blockchain and cryptocurrency news outlet.

In his announcement, Borchgrevink mentions the resurgence of CCN.com is due to resurfacing of their old domain, CryptoCoinNews.com. He states that a Google forum member alerted him of this.

“a friendly helper in Google’s forum mentioned that ‘CryptoCoinsNews.com’ – our previous domain- is reappearing in Google searches.”

Borchgrevink goes on to explain that the domain was changed back in 2017. He adds that CryptoCoinNews.com has been “absent” on the search engine ever since.

Interestingly enough, Borchgrevink’s post states that new articles (from CCN.com) are being credited to their old domain name.

This could signal that the change in Google’s algorithm is giving higher credit to domain age.

Is There a Conspiracy?

The news of CCN’s shutdown provoked a vocal response from multiple cryptocurrency and blockchain communities. However, Google did not directly reply to the accusations of foul play.

This caused people, including myself, to seriously consider selective censorship from the search engine giant. And proved the need for further transparency.

The reappearance of CCN is likely to add further fuel to the conspiratorial fire. How have they returned literally a day after they provoked a communal outcry? Have Google acted to alter their algorithm? Was this all a big kerfuffle about nothing?

Whatever the reason behind Houndini’s crypto news outlet one thing is for sure: this whole debacle has proven a need for further transparency in the way Google carries out updates.

Many of us, including myself, may have overreacted but, none the less, to quote Borchgrevink this is “abrupt and confusing”.

Love, peace and happiness.