Internet Censorship Explorer, a blog associated with the Citizen Lab initiative, discovers that while Google is censoring its search results for Google.cn, it is not censoring the keyword-based advertising that is displayed on the site .

After buying an advertisement for the banned website for the Human Rights Watch lobby group, ICE discovers that the ad is displayed on Google.cn.

I created my ad (which does not appear to fall under these categories) for hrw.org, which is censored by google.cn, and it was held in a queue waiting to be viewed and labeled “Family Safe”. Only “Family Safe” ads are allowed to be shown by Google in China. Eventually my ad was approved as “Family Safe” and was labeled as currently being shown…

My ad was being shown on the uncensored Chinese language Google, but not the censored Google.cn. Google checks what ads to deliver by location (determined by IP address) and the language setting of your browser. Despite both of these showing that my language was Chinese and my location was in China the ad did not properly appear.

Eventually, my ad began to be shown on Google.cn. While my ad does not appear every time the keywords are searched, it does periodically appear.

Although there are no search results available for hrw.org, my ad for a censored website did appear on some occasions.

While it is news that the AdWords service does display uncensored advertising on Google.cn, AsiaPundit has been aware of the lack of censorship in AdSense for some time. The right-hand corner of the below screencap, taken in Shanghai minutes ago, clearly indicates that advertisers bidding on China-related terms are not necessarily pro-CCP.

While some groups have boycotted Google over its China censorship, in light of this evidence, AsiaPundit suggests a new tactic of buying Chinese AdWords terms.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, google, northeast asia