"How do I find out if web users in China can access my website at xyz.com?"
Following this story on China blocking Blogger blogs ahead of Olympic games, Todd is looking to conduct similar test for his own website to confirm that his site is not blocked by the Chinese government.
There are at least three reliable services that help you test Internet filtering in China using more or less the same method. They have computers located in different cities of China that try to access your site using the ping command.
If you get a "Packets lost" error or there’s a time-out while connecting to your site, chances are that the site is restricted.
1. Just Ping – They have checkpoints inside Hong Kong and Shanghai in China.
2. Watch Mouse – This service too has monitoring stations inside Hong Kong and Shanghai in China.
3. Website Pulse – In addition to Hong Kong and Shanghai, Website Pulse conducts website connectivity test from a computer located in Beijing as well.
Unlike the previous two services that simply do a ping test, this service connects to your site and tries downloading the complete HTML web page. The total response time shows how long it takes for your website to download.
Related: How to Read Blogger Blogs in China
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/blogging/test-website-blocked-in-china-or-accessible/3262/
Reader Comments
Glad to know the great people of China are able to read my meanderings on michaelrbeck.com!
Written by Michael Beck on 05.12.08
i would be very happy if chinese cant access my site.. atleast it will stop some damned hackers.
Written by PixDev on 05.13.08
why on earth did they block my site ?
Possibly its a blanket ban on all blogs ?
thats a couple of billion readers lost
Written by xHydra on 05.13.08
Looks like just-ping.com won’t help for websites that rejects ping.
I tried cnn.com at just-ping.com and watch mouse.
Result: Packets lost (100%)
Same if I ping from my PC.
But websitepulse.com says its “OK”. so websitepulse.com may be the de facto way to check.
Written by benjamin on 05.13.08
These don’t see to be too reliable. They are showing sites that are blocked but are not and showing some sites as not blocked but indeed are blocked.
Written by Frank on 05.13.08
OMG – I just tried my website at just-ping.com, and absolutely all packets lost – Never mind just China alone!
Written by Ritesh on 05.13.08
I just found out my site has been blocked in China. It was working 10 days ago but not now. The site is on go daddy ip. Is it possible to put it on Chinese ip (Baidu)as well?
So people who cannot log on through go daddy will get it from China IP. Does this make sense ?
Written by Ann Margrain on 06.24.08
Hi, Thanks for the article and access to the tools. I just got blocked too. I live in China. The site is for teaching English and it just got ranked. PR3 which I was happy about. There is absolutely nothing offensive to China there. I did offer a full money back guarantee to my students of IELTS. I suspect that this is what did it. The major English schools here have a lot of influence on the powers that be. I’ve been here for 2 years so I guess its time to move on, or maybe I’ll be “pushed”. It really makes me angry what a few do to the majority. I really love China but I can’t tolerate this crap.
Written by Wayne Kirk on 10.07.08
My wife is travelling in China currently and while she was able to access our own B&B accommodation booking site in Beijing, since going out into the provinces no access possible. The Blocking checkers don’t however check from the provinces.
A couple of observations: We can access the home page via a direct ip address (but not subpages as all the links go back to the domain name or the PHP script depends on being accessed via Domain not ip). So I suspect that it is Mydomain’s DNS server that is actually being blocked.
And why just in the provinces? Possibly out of date or confused blocking policies? Additionally, while able to access Paypal’s homepage in the Chinese provinces, not able to actually log in. The paranoid might even suspect DNS poisoning to harvest passwords!
Some tests via link show that in the big cities the site is not blocked but boy is it slow to access. So the Great Firewall is slowing everything down it seems.
Food for thought for any company thinking of setting up a business or branch office in China.
It would be good to know the government web page or email address to complain to in China – I am sure lots of humans are employed in to look after the Firewall and they must be able to use their judgement too.
Written by Nigel R on 04.26.09