Social networking sites in China blocking search engines

The blogging site of Chinese Internet portal Sohu,
along with social networking service (SNS) websites
51.com, Xiaonei, Hainei and others, have blocked
Baidu (and other search engines) from indexing the
site content. According to a source at one of the
SNS websites, all of the relatively active SNS
networks are now either blocking search engines
from spidering their sites, or planning to block
them shortly. The reason for the move is to protect
the privacy of users, who typically use their real
names to register with SNS sites.