Google is normally the center of our internet lives. Unless you're a hipster and use Bing, or are up with the stock market and use Yahoo!, pretty much all searches, and most of our email goes through Google. And usually, with regards to search engine results, Google does a pretty damn good job. Unfortunately, Google has no idea what's relevant when it comes to China. So if you want to access Facebook in China this summer 2012, you're lucky you've stumbled upon this article.

I'm not kidding.

Let me give you a bit of background, and hopefully I won't bore you. I run a blog on how to unblock websites in China. Actually, I run a couple of blogs. They're all pretty much centered around the idea of accessing Facebook in China. The problem is that people search for different terms like "get on Facebook in China', "unblock Facebook in China", "Bypass the Great Firewall of China", and things like that. There's a whole 'keyword' aspect to blogging to get your material found, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, I live in China. I know what's going on. So as a way to keep everyone up to date on which sites are blocked, which methods are and aren't working, and all the other details that only people in China know, I would write about significant events and changes to Chinese internet and The Great Firewall - from INSIDE China.

And everyone was happy.

Readers got relevant information, I got traffic to my blogs.

Then Google changed things up and decided that my fresh, relevant, accurate information about how to access Facebook and another blocked sites in China wasn't good enough.

Here's what turn up now.

• Result 1: Yahoo answers from 2009 - Answer now irrelevant
• Result 2: Blog Post from 2011: Solutions no longer valid
• Result 3: Forum question from someone PLANNING on going to China in 2009, with no clear answer

*Results may change by the time you get to read this

So how can you expect to find the results you want, when Google only brings up this crapola from 3 years ago?

Beats me.

But hey, you're one step ahead. If Google doesn't like my blog, they sure as hell better like my article.

As of 2012, you can still use a VPN to access Facebook in China. What's a VPN? Oh man, if you don't know that, that's a step back for you. VPNs are a type of software that hides your Chinese IP address and allows you to connect to a private network outside of China. Essentially, it makes you invisible to the Chinese government, and immune to Chinese internet rules.

But here's the catch. China isn't stupid. So the GFW (Great Firewall) has blocked tons of VPN sites. And you need to know which ones aren't blocked to get access, or information from inside the wall. Because no matter how many advertisements you stumble across, no matter how many blog posts you read, and no matter how many news reports you read, 99% are outside looking in, and don't have a clue what the net is like in here.