On behalf of everyone here, congrats to the folks at Anime News Network.
At 11:36PM (Eastern) last night, Anime News Network CEO Christophe Macdonald tweeted out one simple line of text: “animenewsnetwork.com”, to signal that ANN was back in action in its original domain.
— Christophe Macdonald (@ANN_Ed) August 28, 2017
This closes a chapter for the organization, which began early in the month. On August 7, Anime News Network was hit by a major cyber-attack, which crippled the outlet. The main site was taken down, emails were compromised, and the main “animenewsnetwork.com” domain’s ICANN registration was altered and re-registered to a “nathan ahh.”
Furthemore, ANN’s @anime Twitter account was also taken over, along with the personal account of ANN Executive Editor Zac Bertschy.
In the days leading up to last night’s recovery, Macdonald noted that the hack did cause Anime News Network to take a traffic and SEO hit, though social media traffic was far higher with Facebook accounting for a 50% increase overall during the period.
It should come as no surprise that ANN's traffic is way down thanks to the hack. The decrease is mostly from search results.
— Christophe Macdonald (@ANN_Ed) August 25, 2017
What's really surprising is that Social Media traffic is WAY up. Facebook is sending us 50% more visitors every day than it did before.
— Christophe Macdonald (@ANN_Ed) August 25, 2017
Source: Twitter (ANN_Ed)
Editor’s Note: Once again, on behalf of everyone at Anime Herald, I’d like to say “congrats” to the folks at Anime News Network. We wish you the best as you get back to 100% in these coming weeks.