The abrupt closure of stalwart cryptocurrency media outlet CCN was a shock to everyone who follows or is a part of the digital currency world. CCN was established at about the same time as several other sites for cryptocurrency, and it was a competitive source for information. A few days after an abrupt closure, CCN suddenly returned. This lead to a lot of rumors and questions about the situation.

Many wondered how a key player in the industry could shut down without warning then return just a few days later. They also wondered how a domain with millions of monthly visitors and a lot of Google traffic could fall off of an algorithm change and lose 90 percent of its ad revenue in a hot minute.

On June 10, its CEO announced that it took a 71 percent drop overnight after the Google core update. This lead to a 90 percent overnight decrease in ad revenue. However, other cryptocurrency news outlets also reported big dips in traffic after the Google core algorithm update, so it was not just a CCN problem. After realizing this, the CCN CEO speculated that it was politics and anti free speech that brought it down. The CEO noted that some other countries had their far-right sites drop in traffic while the far-left sites on cryptocurrency had an increase.

This lead the CEO to guess that liberals coded a new algorithm in order to put down conservative sites and dismantle large corporate structures online. The reality is that Google dominates just about everything online. From free email to web browsers, it leads all of its market segments by a wide margin. People rely on the Google algorithms for site traffic, visibility and more. The Google core update was hundreds of tweaks to the algorithm. While individually small, when added up, hundreds of tweaks can amount to a huge change in search engine results page (SERP) placement.

SERP fluctuations can leave site owners astounded and frustrated. This is not the first time that Google algorithm changes lead to huge dips in traffic in a particular site niche.