Google backtracks on Chinese search block

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 31 Mar 2010 at 08:58

Google has backtracked on its explanation of why visitors to its Hong Kong site were being blocked, leaving Chinese users mired in confusion.

Google recently closed its censored Google.cn search engine and began redirecting visitors to its uncensored Hong Kong site, in protest at Chinese attacks on its network in December.

Earlier in the week, reports surfaced that visitors were no longer able to access the site, leading to speculation it had been blocked by the Chinese Government.

However, Google subsequently issued a statement taking responsibility for the problems. "The 'gs_rfai' started appearing in the URLs of Google searches globally as part of a search parameter, a string of characters that sends information about the query to Google so we can return the best result," the company explained.

"Because this parameter contained the letters rfa the Great Firewall was associating these searches with Radio Free Asia, a service that has been inaccessible in China for a long time - hence the blockage. We are currently looking at how to resolve this issue."

Strangely, the company has now backtracked, claiming it wasn't responsible for the snafu after all. "Having looked into this issue in more detail, it's clear we actually added this parameter a week ago. So whatever happened to block Google.com.hk must have been as a result of a change in the Great Firewall," the company said.

"However, interestingly our search traffic in China is now back to normal, even though we have not made any changes at our end. We will continue to monitor what is going on, but for the time being this issue seems to be resolved."

The incident comes after Google confirmed that China has begun blocking access to some of its mobile services.