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What Google has to say about 503 status codes

What Google has to say about 503 status codes

Google has recently expressed that downtime due to 503 errors are acceptable, yet extended unavailability can have an impact on crawling.

During a recent edition of Google Search Central’s SEO Office Hours, Google webmaster trends analyst, Gary Illyes, clarified the company’s stance on temporary 503 “service unavailable” codes.

He commented that:

“Serving a 503 status code for an extended period of time will cause a decrease in crawl rate. However, 10-15 minutes every now and then is not extended by any means, and should be fine.”

In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have this issue, yet some websites will encounter these difficulties every now and then. Google won’t punish sites for this, as long as it isn’t an extended period of time.

While they didn’t exactly specify what is, and what isn’t, considered an extended period of time, they did use the example that 10-15 minutes multiple times per week would be acceptable.

What impact could this have on your website?

This is useful information to know, as you shouldn’t worry about the impact these downtimes will have on your site, as long as they are resolved within an acceptable timeframe.

Many sites will go through regular updates and changes that require a certain level of downtime. Websites can also experience unexpected downtime due to system errors, but you shouldn’t panic if this occurs – so long as you make sure the issue is resolved quickly.

At Engage Web, we keep up to date with the latest trends online. Reach out to our friendly team today to find out more about our services.

James Hussey
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