Google is reporting a drop in traffic to its sites in China, and an Internet monitor said the search engine's services are being blocked in the country.
Google?s Transparency Report is showing a bigger-than-typical plunge in China traffic today. According to Greatfire.org, a website that monitors Internet activity and access in China, the reason behind this traffic drop is that Google's services including mail, maps and document storage, are being blocked in China.
Google says that there's nothing wrong on its end, suggesting that the rapid decline in traffic may be as a result of China state Internet regulation rather than a networking or power outage.
Searches for Google services were recently being routed to another site located in Korea, Greatfire.org reported.
The search giant has weathered outages in the world's most populous market since Google said it would end its practice of acquiescing to Chinese government officials' demands to censor search results in China nearly three years ago.
Update:
Access to Google services in China appeared to return Saturday morning, meaning that the blocking appeared to last for about 12 hours, with Internet traffic resuming to the sites after 6 a.m. local time.