Website blocked in China

[caravan]

I help manage the website development and seo for a valve manufacturer. The website has a .eu domain. Within the site there are three language versions of the website. The client also owns several surrounding domains (.co.uk, .dk, .de) all of which 301 to the main .eu website.

The client has recently highlighted that several of their customers in China have complained that they can't access the website. As a good portion of their business comes from China this is an issue that is important to them.

I realise that China has some very strict rules on what can and cannot be shown and initial google searches has indicated that the site isn't on a banned list. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing on the website about China or anything that could be deemed contraversal. One theory we have is that as the website is hosted on a shared hosting server the IP address has been banned for some reason.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can resolve this problem? If there are any webproworld members in China your feedback on whether you can access the domains frese.eu and frese.dk would be much appreciated.

Andy

[lpoulsen]

I tried connecting to the site using a proxy server in China, and indeed I failed to reach Frese.EU, while I was able to reach dr.dk › forside (the Danish public broadcasting service).

Since there seems to be nothing on the site that could offend Chinese political sensibilities, it seems likely that this is the result of blocking of an IP address range. The site is hosted in a "web hotel" in the UK, and who knows who it may be sharing an IP address with.

Some options for your client if this is the problem:
1) Bring the hosting in-house, so it is their own IP address.
Put a linux box in their office.
2) Move to a different hosting provider and hope the new
IP address is better
3) Pay a few bucks extra for a dedicated IP address.

No 3 is what I would do. My company does exactly that, and we have never had a China problem.

[izziart]

I would go for choice #3 as well. I'm not as much of a brain surgeon in this area as you all are, but common sense reigns strong. Having your own server brings on a lot of headaches in the tech area and keeping up to date with the programs and software. Going to another host server could just simply end up being a lateral move, since all shared hosting has the same risk. Door Number Three!

[stevebcali]

First i would try and find out why it's getting blocked. But getting a dedicated ip is easy, moving the server takes integration and could prove a hassle for a bit. but unless you know what ip range is blocked you could just be paying more to be blocked.
You could do a mirror site with another host that the Chinese wouldn't block, maybe i a country that is china friendly.
But until you know the real reason, it's hard to say whats best. I wonder if they would be mad if other countries started blocking their commerce sites..

[sanver]

We had one of our SugarCRM Hosting customers complaining that their employees are not able to access US hosted site in China.

You can not fight Chinese on these matters.

We moved them to another server in US which was accessible from China.

[seo4china]

I was able to access the site using a proxy website here in Shanghai (proxy4china.com - Free proxy site in China)

The current blocking is probably an IP address issue, your site sharing the same IP with another site that may be politically incorrect or unfriendly by Beijing standards. We have dealt previously with similar issues for international clients and here are a couple of solutions:
-Have your host change your site IP (by moving to another server?) this usually does the trick. (done that couple of times with sites hosted with godaddy)
-Get a new host
-Create a mirror site
-Find a cheap host in China (not that I want to advertise but you might check our web dept site www.sinohosting.net )

Of course you have the option to get a dedicated IP but in most time it is not worth the money.

Hope it helps.
Pat

[minkley]

I had a similar problem a couple of months ago. There is very little you can do about this unfortunately. The biggest problem we had was that all email traffic between the company and china was blocked.

It turns out that any ISP that hosts Adult sites will get blocked. This is not just the Adult site IP, but all the IP's hosted by the ISP. So getting dedicated IP's will not necessarily solve your problem if they are with the same ISP. As soon as a 'blocked' address shows up in the route to your new IP, it will get blocked.

I contacted around a dozen or so other ISP's and explained the situation and asked if they could help with this in any way. All of them came back and said they had no control over the content of their customers web sites and could not realistically make any commitments in this regard. Some said they are seeing this problem more frequently , but are unable to do anything about it.

Eventually, I created Gmail id's for everyone in the company just to allow them to communicate with users in China.

The only other alternative is for you to host your website on a Chinese ISP, but you may have problems getting to it from a blocked IP address.

I even tried to approach local gov trade departments and the gov officials were not interested. It seems that governments are quit e happy to ***** foot around China and let them do what ever they want.

There is no means of appealing - the Chinese government are not in the least bit sympathetic, even though we are their customers.

This is why it is called 'The Great Firewall of China'

[izziart]

wow, i'm not international yet, although since the internet, i have friends all over the globe.

but as far as your host company saying they have no control over what their customers put on their websites, that sounds a little flimsy. when i started my bulk email blast service i did not realize my host company would not handle that kind of activity. They got on me right away about it. A good host company can tell by the bandwidth whats going on with a website. I'm glad my host company set me straight about it. I now use a Lyris bulk email host company and they take care of not only the bandwidth issues but any other kind of spam issues. Its great.

good luck with China -- i think you thought of a great work-around with gmail -- good old USA ingenuity -- they may be the firewall but we are still the light (thank God)

[minkley]

Yes I figured that when Google is banned from China, everyone else probably will be. Furthermore, if you want to get your web pages out to the Chinese user, you might also consider Google Page Creator. I think its around 100MB of free web real-estate.

Apparently Google offer a proxy as well Google or Enter a URL

which your Chinese users could possibly use to get to your webpage.

rgds
Mark