The Crypto Purge 2019:

We have been hearing about the complaints that the Youtube is banning the crypto related content and that is also called the “crypto purge” or “Bitcoin purge“. 1st we have witnessed such complaints in late 2019 when different cryptocurrency content creators received warnings and they also complained that the Youtube is pulling out their cryptocurrency related content and deleting their crypto related channels.            

The content creators was told the reason for banning their content and channels was "harmful and dangerous content" unsatisfactory.

This situation created a lot of confusion as most of the creators were complaining that they received no prior warnings for banning their contents and channels.

 

The Youtube response:

In Dec 2019 theYoutube actively released a statement that: “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”

Below is the screenshot from the bbc.com showing the youtube response that they also shared on their twitter handle:

 

The recent purge:

It seems that again the youtube platform that is owned by the Google is showing another extreme gesture towards censoring the Bitcoin content and related channels. This time the famous crypto content creators and youtubers complaining that Youtube is “shadow banning” their crypto related content. That means their videos and contents are being removed from the feed of the users.

 

The Google announcement for May 2020:

The Google has tweeted on its official account that they have started May 2020 Core Update.

“Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the May 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that.”

Click here to view the google twitter handle

 

If we further read their blog post then its short abstract is as below:

 

1. Core updates & reassessing content:

In this point as per Google there will be nothing wrong with the content or pages that are not violating Goggle’s guidelines.

If during the core update some pages or content are not performing well it doesn't mean that they have violated the guidelines. And there is nothing like that system update is targeting any specific pages sites or content. In fact after this core update the assessment system for content will be improved and most of the deserving content that is not performing well and undervalued will be doing better.

 

2. Focus on content:

Here the Google again gives a confirmation that there is nothing wrong with the content that will be not performing well during or after this core update.  It doesn't mean that they are violating any of their guidelines. Here the Google has suggested for such content creators and the page’s owners to focus on ensuring that they are offering best content in order to be rewarded well.

 

3. Get to know the quality rater guidelines & Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T):

Here to Google has advised for great content to review Google’s “search quality rater guidelines”, It is available in PDF format you can download from Google’s blog. Here the Google also tells us that the raters are the people who give them the insights. The Google also wants to make sure that the people who search on Google have no control on how the system ranks the pages and content. The Google uses them as a feedback that helps to understand that their system is working well.

 

4. Recovering and more advice:

Under this point the Google wants us to keep in our minds. Any improvements by the content creators and site owners are not guarantee for recovery moreover the pages and contents have not static or guaranteed positions in search results. So the only guarantee is the quality of the content and pages that can rank them well.

In short the Google wants the site owner’s and the content creators to focus on the quality content rather to focus on SEO techniques. As per Google this core update will take upto two weeks. So after two weeks we can finally observe any consequences and final results how it will affect the different content creators.

 

How it is affecting the new youtubers:

Even though I am not as that much big youtuber for content creator as my channel is hardly one year old. I started my channel back in May 2019. But I would like to share some of my analytics with you to show you that how my channel is performing in these days when the Google Core update is in process and how much my channel is being affected by this event. By the way if you didn’t subscribe to my channel so far then here is the link of my channel for the subscription:

https://www.youtube.com/moon333

Below is the screenshot of analytics of my channel. And you can see a message is appeared that “Views are up! Your channel got 9,686 views in the last 28 days.” Before this message in the first week of May 2020 I received another message that “Congratulations your channel is performing well than before as the people are getting more and more interested in your videos and channel as they are selecting your videos from the browse features and search”. You can see my views for 28 days are 9.7K that is more than usual as my typical range for last 28 days was not more than 6.3K. And if you see the watch time of my channel then it is also more than usual as it is 686.9 hours for last 28 days and my typical range of watch hours in last 28 days was not more than 300 hours. Now if we observe the number of subscribers then it is also more than usual as previously the number of subscribers in last 28 days was not more than 117. And if we see the real time analytics then it can be easily observed that at this time for last 48 hours the number of views is 1120 in fact it is varying between 1100 to 1500 and before the core update it was not more than 1000 for last 48 hours.

 

 

Now if we dig it little more deeper and click on more options then a graph is appeared. And we can see that this graph was almost flat with little bit up and down moves. But since the first week of May 2020 has been started the graph is moved up aggressively and even at this time the graph is up more than usual.

 

Timing is more important than complaints:

After watching this graph we come to know that the performance of my channel is increased in the first week of May 2020. And this is the time when the Google has started its core update. Guys we cannot we cannot say anything with the confirmation whether this is happening due to the Google Core update or is there any other reason. But the timing is very much important as we can observe that since the first week of May is started then many Youtubers are complaining that their content is not being appeared in the user’s feed and in the searches. And many of the Other content creators who were not rewarded well before after this update now being rewarded well. Like I have given example of my channel.

 

If this is a mistake then Youtube needs to fix it as soon as possible:

But if this is some kind of crypto purge , shadow banning or some system error then youtube should take care of this and fix it as soon as possible as the crypto channels give very big amount of revenue and viewers to youtube
If the youtube won’t fix it and they will do it again and again then other platforms can take over as the cryptcocurrency related creators have many other options and platforms to work with.