Testing the Great Firewall of China
May 5th, 2007 by MarkRecently, Lonnie (of OMBW) wrote about a pretty nice web tool that tests to see if a site is blocked in China or not. It’s free, and you can check your site’s accessibility from servers in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. The name of the site is Website Pulse.
It’s been pretty accurate as far as I can tell. I had been getting about 30% of my traffic from China, until the past couple of weeks, during which that percentage fell to about 1%. During this time, the tool has been saying I was blocked. Now, it says I’m no longer blocked, and my traffic logs seem to confirm it.
Why I was blocked briefly, and then unblocked is a mystery.
:
May 5th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
They routinely block and unblock my site. Several sites report getting temp’ blocks when they use certain words not well regarded by the Golden Shield or the Net Nannies.
My newest piece won’t please them a bit.
Best from GZ
OMBW
May 6th, 2007 at 5:48 am
If your site is on a shared server, you may not be getting blocked. It could be another site and you just happen to be affected.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:48 am
I’m outraged!(kidding) I actually blogged about this a month before your friend. http://www.frostfox.com/blog/the-great-firewall-of-china/
You even commented on it, yet I got no credit :p
May 6th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Frostfox, that’s because the site you linked to sucks. It says I’m blocked no matter what. Website Pulse actually seems to be accurate!