Cointelegraph's 80% Traffic Drop After a Google Penalty: 7 Lessons for Site Owners

Crypto news site Cointelegraph lost about 80% of its organic search traffic after Google issued a manual penalty in October 2025, CoinDesk reported on Oct. 7 in a story saying the company is looking for a buyer. Cointelegraph denied the sale report on Oct. 8, posting on X that "we are not for sale" and asking for a correction.

The ownership fight is between two crypto newsrooms. The traffic numbers are a lesson for anyone who runs a website: one manual action from Google took a well-known publisher from more than 12 million monthly visits to roughly 700,000, according to Similarweb data cited by CoinDesk. Here's what was reported, what isn't known, how Google's manual actions work, and seven checks to run on your own site this week.

What was reported

CoinDesk, citing a person familiar with the matter, said Cointelegraph was shopping itself to buyers but did not say for how much. Its report included these details:

• Google issued a manual penalty against Cointelegraph in October 2025, which caused about an 80% drop in organic traffic and made the site disappear from Google's search results.
• Before that, the site was hit by a front-end exploit in June 2025.
• Similarweb put monthly visits at more than 12 million in December 2024 and just above 700,000 as of Sept. 1, 2026.
• A long stretch of flat crypto prices has also pulled reader attention away from crypto news in general.
• Cointelegraph, founded in 2013, has more than 200 employees, per its LinkedIn page.

A follow-up report from EdgeX News on Oct. 8 added that combined traffic across 349 crypto media outlets fell about 33% during 2025. So the whole sector shrank, but Cointelegraph's decline of about 94% over that longer period was far deeper. EdgeX also described the June 2025 breach as one that displayed a fake cryptocurrency promotion on the site.

Cointelegraph's X post, addressed to CoinDesk's publisher and editorial leadership, said: "Your article is based on false information and contains multiple factual errors." Phemex News reported that the company asked for a correction with prominence equal to the original story. EdgeX reported that CoinDesk has stood by its reporting.

What we don't know

Three things are worth keeping straight:

• The sale is disputed. One unnamed source says Cointelegraph is for sale, and the company says it isn't.
• The reason for the manual action hasn't been reported. Neither CoinDesk nor Cointelegraph's response says which Google policy was involved, so don't assume it was AI content, links or anything else.
• Similarweb figures are estimates from a third-party panel, not the site's own analytics.

For site owners, the sale question matters less than the traffic chart. Even if every ownership detail turns out wrong, the reported drop shows how much a single search penalty can take away.

How Google manual actions work

Google's Search Console documentation explains the process. A manual action is issued when "a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies." Affected pages can be ranked lower or left out of results entirely, without any visible sign to searchers.

Key points from Google's help page:

• You're notified in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center. If you never open Search Console, you can miss it.
• An action can cover a pattern of pages, such as one directory, or the entire site.
• You have to fix the issue on every affected page. Google says fixing only some pages will not earn a partial return to search results.
• After fixing, you send a reconsideration request that explains the exact problem, the steps you took and the results.
• Most reviews take several days or weeks, and link-related requests can take longer. Google asks site owners not to resubmit before getting a decision.

There's also a note that matters given the sale story. If you buy a site that broke Google's policies before you owned it, Google says to fix the issues and mention in your reconsideration request that you recently acquired it.

The policies that most often trip up small sites

Google's spam policies list many violations. A few are easy to fall into without meaning to:

• Scaled content abuse: many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help readers, "no matter how it's created."
• Link spam: buying or selling links for ranking purposes, including sending a product in exchange for a post with a link. Paid links are fine if they're marked with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored."
• Hacked content: anything placed on your site without permission through a security hole. A breach can turn into a search problem if spam pages are injected.

Again, nothing reported says which of these, if any, applied to Cointelegraph.

7 checks for site owners this week

1. Open your Manual actions report. A green check mark means no manual actions. Make sure Search Console messages reach an inbox someone reads.
2. Check the Security Issues report too. Update plugins and themes, remove admin accounts you don't recognize, and review third-party scripts.
3. Audit thin pages. If you published batches of near-identical pages, such as city pages or auto-written posts, improve them, merge them or remove them.
4. Label paid and affiliate links. Sponsored posts and paid placements should carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow."
5. Before buying a site, ask for Search Console access. Check its manual action and security history, not just its traffic chart.
6. Build channels Google doesn't control. An email list, a YouTube channel or a community means one penalty can't cut you off from every reader.
7. Watch your traffic weekly. A sudden drop across the whole site is different from slow decline. We covered how Google's last spam update played out in our September 2026 spam update guide, and how loyal readers can follow you in Search in our preferred sources explainer.

Disclosure: some links are affiliate links; ShopperCove may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

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Tools that help

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How this was made: facts were gathered on 8 Oct 2026 (IST) from CoinDesk's report, Cointelegraph's X response as reported by EdgeX News, Phemex News and Lookonchain, and Google's Manual Actions and spam policy documentation listed below, then written up with AI help and checked line by line against those sources. ShopperCove has no inside knowledge of Cointelegraph's penalty.

Sources

• Open coindesk.comShow address
• Open pro.edgex.exchangeShow address
• Open lookonchain.comShow address
• Open phemex.comShow address
• Open support.google.comShow address
• Open developers.google.comShow address
• Open instadoodle.comShow address
• Open localtry.comShow address

Related

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