Thanks for this post. I relatively new in the SEO too… I’m trying to get/attract some viewers in China. I need to ask though, Is Baidu like a Chinese Search engine? I’ve tried to list my blog 2 weeks ago in Baidu but the chinese characters threw me off… But now tht I started a blog about the Olympics next year… it looks like I really need to give it another try. BTW, here’s my blog: http://www.olympicblogger.blogspot.com

Thanks

Blogspot blogs are currently blocked in China, which - in effect - would render a baidu listing next to worthless.

Personally, they change their policy sometime soon.
But don’t hold your breath.

If you want a Chinese audience, try hosting on your own domain. Or at least on a service that isn’t blocked in China.

(a neat workaround for circumventing censors)

I had made improvements on my blog for the past few days. One of them is a widget that show the countries from which viewers of my site came from. I was surprised to see that I got 5 hits from China. I couldn’t mistake it for traffic from Hong Kong as Hong Kong is represented with a different flag and I got 12 hits from Hong Kong separately too. Digging in deeper I found out that the hits from China came from Google.

I always thought and agreed that blogspot is banned in China. But do you have any idea if things have changed recently about this issue? Any idea how Google searching in China might have landed people on my blog if it is indeed blocked in that country?

Thanks in advance!

But we can intermittently get a peek sometimes.
The Chinese net-nanny is a tough bitch to figure out.