Is It Down? Website Checker

Is it down for everyone or just you?

Is it down really asks two questions at once: is the site offline for everyone, or does it only fail on your device? This tool tries the address from our server in France and does not stop at a single word. First it checks whether the domain resolves in DNS, then whether the server accepts the connection, then the SSL certificate and the HTTP status code. After that it tells you where the problem is and who needs to act.

Most similar checkers only say up or down. However, when a client site goes offline, my first question is always the same: which link in the chain broke? In my web design projects I run post launch checks in this order, and the tool follows the same order.

• Up: the site works, so the problem is most likely on your side.
• Slow or Limited: the site answers, but something gets in the way.
• Down: the site does not open from our server either, so the problem is the site.

Why is the answer to is it down more than one word?

A website can break at five different points when you look at it from outside, and each one needs a different fix. That is why the tool shows the result as a chain of five steps:

1. DNS: does the domain resolve to an IP address? An expired domain breaks the chain right here.
2. Connection: does the server accept a connection on port 443 or 80?
3. SSL/TLS: is the certificate valid, and does the handshake complete?
4. HTTP response: does the server return 200, 404 or 503?
5. Content: is the page the real site, or a maintenance, suspended or parked page?

The states in between matter as much as a site that is fully down. For example, many large sites stop automated checks with bot protection; the tool recognizes that challenge page and does not call the site down. Likewise, a site whose hosting account was suspended still returns a 200, yet visitors only see the suspension notice.

I also say it openly: the main check runs from a single point. For a regional problem, the Test from other countries button sends extra requests from four countries through check-host.net.

What should you do if a site works for others but not for you?

If the tool finds the site up, the problem is most likely on your side. The cause I see most often is a stale DNS cache: after a site moves to a new server, your device keeps going to the old IP address for a while. Try these in order:

• Flush the DNS cache: on Windows run ipconfig /flushdns in Command Prompt, on macOS run sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder in Terminal. In Chrome, the Clear host cache button on chrome://net-internals/#dns empties the browser's own cache.
• Try another network: switch off Wi-Fi and use mobile data. If the site opens, the problem is your router, your provider or the office network.
• Turn off extensions: ad blockers sometimes break a site completely.
• Change your DNS server: 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) or 8.8.8.8 (Google) gets around most local resolver problems.

Schools, offices and some countries also filter websites, so the test from other countries helps here too. If you want to know who owns the domain, the WHOIS lookup shows the registrar and dates.

What do 502, 503, 504 and other server errors mean?

Codes that start with 5 say the problem sits on the server, so all a visitor can do is wait. RFC 9110, the current definition of HTTP, separates them like this:

• 500: the server hit an unexpected condition. Most of the time a plugin, theme or code error is behind it.
• 502: a server acting as a gateway or proxy got an invalid response from the server behind it. You typically see this when the PHP application behind Nginx crashes.
• 503: the server cannot handle the request because of a temporary overload or scheduled maintenance. It may add a Retry-After header to say how long to wait.
• 504: a gateway did not get a timely response from the server behind it.

If the site runs behind Cloudflare, codes from 520 to 526 appear as well. They show that Cloudflare itself works and the problem is the origin server. For instance, 521 means the origin refused the connection from Cloudflare, while 522 means the connection timed out. The tool recognizes the Cloudflare signature in the response headers and explains each code on its own.

Is your own site down? What to check in the first 15 minutes

When your own site goes down, a fixed checklist beats panic. This is the order I follow on client sites:

1. Read the result: if the tool says DNS, connection or 5xx, you already know the layer.
2. Domain expiry: with no DNS record, first check the expiry date in the WHOIS lookup. A domain that failed to renew because of an expired credit card is more common than you would think.
3. DNS records: confirm with the DNS lookup that the A and AAAA records point to the right server.
4. Certificate: if browsers show a warning, the SSL checker reveals expiry and chain problems.
5. Server log: for 500 and 502 errors the answer is almost always in the error log.

Also think back to your last change. Most outages I have seen started right after an update, a new plugin or a DNS move. Rolling the change back is often faster than hunting for the root cause; you can look for the root cause once the site is back up.

Does downtime hurt your Google rankings?

A short outage rarely leaves a mark, but the risk grows with the duration. According to Google Search Central, 5xx and 429 responses make Google's crawlers temporarily slow down crawling. Indexed URLs are preserved for a while; if the errors continue, they eventually drop out of the index. Once the server returns 2xx again, the crawl rate gradually recovers.

For planned maintenance the right method is clear too. If you need to take the site offline urgently for 1-2 days, Google recommends an informational page with a 503 status code instead of the content. If you serve the same maintenance page with a 200, Google may treat it as your real content. For longer work, limiting features is safer than switching the whole site off.

So when you notice an outage, also open the crawl stats in Search Console; there you see when the server errors began. For the bigger picture, my technical SEO guide explains how server responses affect rankings.

How can you spot outages before your users do?

The worst case is learning from a customer that your site is offline. A few simple habits prevent that:

• Set up monitoring: free uptime services check the site every few minutes and email you when it goes down. The Auto check button in this tool only runs while the page is open, which suits following a short outage.
• Put the domain on auto renew: check once a year that the card on file with your registrar is current.
• Watch certificate renewal: automatic renewal can break silently, so check the days left regularly.
• Test after every change: after each update, open the home page, the forms and the checkout one by one.

The recent checks chart helps as well. For each address the tool shows the checks of the last 24 hours with time, state and duration, so you can roughly see when an outage started. If you need an older copy of a page, the website history tool opens its Internet Archive records. A site that keeps going down usually needs its setup reworked; if slowness is part of it, read my post on how site speed affects SEO.