ow.ly
Mostly blocked
14 of the 15 URLs we have a verdict for under ow.ly are blocked in mainland China; 1 are not. The Great Firewall resets the connection. 796 tests have been run under this domain since 2011-05-03, the most recent on 2026-07-04.
The two are filtered by different means — an unencrypted request by the address and keywords it carries in the clear, an encrypted one by the server name in its TLS handshake — so one working while the other does not is normal.
The site itself
http://ow.lyas of 2026Blockedhttps://ow.lyas of 2026Not blockedhttp://www.ow.lyas of 2026BlockedPages and subdomains (12)
http://ow.ly/3siNKas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/u5WhJBlockedhttp://ow.ly/Mlg1Bas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/NnQXxas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/bjBwEas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/WEbadas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/Z60zEBlockedhttp://ow.ly/2yt1yuas of 2026Blockedhttp://ow.ly/i/5zUfLBlockedhttp://ow.ly/url/shorten-urlBlockedhttp://ow.ly/user/freetibetorgBlockedhttp://ow.ly?cron_key=HW_OMiFD8hN_jLld01nMor9QRryzNeJqho7yuMCADkkas of 2026BlockedAbout ow.ly and the Great Firewall
14 of the 15 URLs we have a verdict for under ow.ly are blocked in mainland China; 1 are not. The Great Firewall resets the connection. 796 tests have been run under this domain since 2011-05-03, the most recent on 2026-07-04.
Plain HTTP and HTTPS differ here: http://ow.ly is blocked, https://ow.ly is not blocked. The two are filtered by different means — an unencrypted request by the address and keywords it carries in the clear, an encrypted one by the server name in its TLS handshake — so one working while the other does not is normal.
A VPN or another circumvention tool routes the request outside mainland China, past the filtering that blocks ow.ly. GreatFire runs GreatFire VPN; the Analyzer also tests the domains of many VPN and proxy providers, so you can check whether one is reachable before relying on it.
Elsewhere on the site
Each URL's status is its verdict over the last 90 days, the same one its own page headlines.