Published in: censorship - china - Tools

“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