Search engines are increasingly censoring their results, often by geographic location, having a significant, negative impact on the right to freedom of expression. The most advanced cases of censoring political content is in search engines that market a version of their product in China. This project aims to expose and monitor the censoring practices of search engines with a specific focus on China.
In order to avoid interference from the China's filtering system, the China-specific versions of Google and MSN, which are hosted outside of China, are queried from outside of China and the China-specific versions of Yahoo and Baidu, hosted inside China, are queried from inside China.
| Engine (uncensored) | Number of Keywords | Number of Results | Timestamp |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | 10 | 2008-03-16 15:59:46 | |
| Engine | Censored % | Censored Keywords | Total Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| 58.3% | 35 | 60 | |
| MSN | 86.6% | 52 | 60 |
| Yahoo | 66.6% | 40 | 60 |
| Baidu | 88.3% | 53 | 60 |
| Keyword | Translation | MSN | Yahoo | Baidu | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 文字獄 | Literary Inquisition | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 3 / 10 |
| 封杀 | force-out | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 美国之音 | Voice of America | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 网特 | network spy | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 3 / 10 |
| 禁看 | forbid to see | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 反封锁 | anti-censorship | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 新闻封锁 | news censorship | 4 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| 反封锁技术 | anti-censorship technology | 4 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 6 / 10 |
| freenet | freenet | 4 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 5 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| triangleboy | triangleboy | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 无界浏览器 | boundless browser | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 3 / 10 |
| safeweb | safeweb | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| tor | tor | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| psiphon | psiphon | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| anonymizer | anonymizer | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 6 / 10 |
| 法轮功 | Falun Gong | 3 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 4 / 10 |
| 周天法 | Zhou Tianfa | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 讲法 | deliver law | 5 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 4 / 10 |
| 林慎立 | Lin Shenli | 6 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 5 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| 明慧 | Minghui | 5 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| 大紀元 | Epoch Times | 6 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 7 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| 李宏志 | Li Hongzhi | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 真善忍 | truthful kind tolerant | 4 / 10 | 5 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 4 / 10 |
| 发正念 | Calmness | 8 / 10 | 9 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| 洪传 | Hong Chuan | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 唐柏桥 | Tang Boqiao | 9 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 9 / 10 | 9 / 10 |
| 圆满 | Consummation | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 佛展千手法 | Buddha stretches a thousand hands | 5 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 6 / 10 |
| 李红痔 | Li red piles | 4 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 5 / 10 | 5 / 10 |
| 贯通两极法 | law of perforating the two poles | 8 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| 夜總會 | night club | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 泡沫经济 | bubble economy | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 空难 | airplane disaster | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 消防队 | fire department | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 3 / 10 |
| 貓肉 | cat meat | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 抢粮记 | Looting grains | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 收容所 | asylum | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 闹事 | make trouble | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 被盗 | be robbed | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 走私 | smuggle | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 天葬 | sky burial | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 空難 | airplane disaster | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 教养院 | correctional facility | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 4 / 10 | 6 / 10 |
| 上海孤儿院 | Shanghai Orphanage | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 中国孤儿院 | china orphanage | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 台獨 | Taiwan independence | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 新疆獨立 | Xinjiang independence | 2 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 4 / 10 |
| 藏獨 | Tibetan independence | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 0 / 10 |
| 专政 | dictatorship | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 抗议 | protest | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 地下刊物 | underground publications | 2 / 10 | 3 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 3 / 10 |
| 地下教会 | underground church | 4 / 10 | 6 / 10 | 5 / 10 | 7 / 10 |
| 腐败 | corruption | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 1 / 10 |
| 專政 | dictatorship | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 自由 | freedom | 2 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 天安門 | Tiananmen | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 达赖 | Dalai | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 屠杀 | massacre | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 0 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 人权 | human rights | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |
| 民主 | democracy | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 | 1 / 10 | 2 / 10 |