First, I should make things more clear, I cannot access researchandmarkets at that night, but it works well later. But societyforterrorismresearch.org is obviously being blocked by GFW intendedly or accidentally. That’s different, I don’t think that’s because it has a “search” in its URL.

If you are right, then all website with “search” in URL will be blocked, obviously it is not the case. And how can you explain why Myspace was redirected too.

For OpenDNS, yes, the requests will be answered by OpenDNS’s closet datacenter, but from OpenDNS’s website, you will know there is no OpenDNS’s server in China.

Regarding GFW, it is too complicated, I think most of us, if not all of us, are just guessing how it works. We all know Youtube was blocked at that night, so I think it may suggest they were adjusting the filters. Yes, that’s just my guess. But I still insist in my guess so far.

It’s very plausible that the website you tried, “ResearchandMarkets” would also be blocked. If you had the chance that night, you would have found that any website containing the word “search” in the hostname was blocked. For another example, this site was unaccessible: “www.societyforterrorismresearch.org”. Does it make sense why? Perhaps you thought incorrectly: it is indeed a ‘”cyberwar” against search engines’, as you put it.

This whole, “tweaking, or probably upgrading,” notion sounds like an ill-informed explanation about a rather complicated problem. As it is known in academic circles, the GFW is not simply changed one-by-one, by hand. It in many senses is dynamic, and what about it do you speculate was “upgraded”? If it were not dynamic, how could they possibly keep up to the changes of the internet? Sure, you see people working manual labor jobs just to fill them, but this is not one of those instances.

Taken from the OpenDNS website, “…no matter where you are in the world your DNS requests are answered by our closest datacenter.” It’s probable these DNS servers were in China, adding to the likelihood of potential DNS poisoning, causing you and the other expats in China so many problems.

So, wrong guess?