Ways to check if a website is really down

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 16, 2008
Updated • Dec 14, 2012
Development
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19

I got the inspiration for this post from the Download Squad article "Is this web site down for everyone or is it just you ?" which mentioned a service that would check if a website was down or if it was more likely to be a problem on the user's side. Some guys mentioned in the comments that the website checking service would display false results from time to time which in turn convinced me to write a post about other methods on how you can check if a website is up, or not.

Checking if a website is up or not should be speedy, you do not want to waste your time analyzing large log files if there is another faster way to accomplish the check. This article is therefor concentrating on methods that reveal results in a matter of seconds which are easy to interpretate.

If you know of a method that is missing let me know and I will check it out and add it if it makes a good fit. On we go with ways to check if a website is really down.

1. Ping

A ping basically sends an Hello to a server waiting for an response. If the response takes to long a timeout will occur. Ping is measured in ms, if it is incredibly high something is wrong with either your computer, the route in between or the destination.

The command is similar in Windows and Linux, just enter ping destination, with destination being an IP or domain name, and wait for the response.

One of the many online scripts that ping servers is located at Ping.eu. It offers other network tools like Traceroute and a port check as well.

2. Traceroute

You can compare Tracerouter with a list of all the roads that you travel until you reach your destination. Only that the roads are the servers in this case that your data is send through to reach their destination. If everything is fine the destination server should appear at the end, if it is not you could get timeouts for instance.

Traceroute Tool from the University of Princeton displays the traceroute between the University and another server on the Internet, you can enter the IP or domain name of the server.

Tracert is the command that you can use in Windows to trace the route between your computer and the destination. Use the command "tracert IP" or "tracert domain" to achieve this. Traceroute is the equivalent in Linux.

3. Domain Name System (DNS)

DNS errors most of the time occur when a website is freshly registered or moving to another server. It usually takes some time to update the DNS records to point at the new server. DNS is providing information much like your phone book is. Domain names are for us puny humans who have troubles remembering those server IP addresses (64.233.161.18 for Google for instance). Problems occur when the Nameservers who translate the human entered domain names into IP addresses have still the old IP in their records while the website is already up and running on the new IP.

You can use the online script DNS Report to receive a detailed report. Green results are fine, red ones point to failures and yellow ones are warnings.

4. Proxies

Proxys can be used to establish connections to websites even if the direct route from your computer to theirs is somehow blocked. You can compare that to visiting a friend and using his computer to connect to a server that you cannot connect to. If it works it is somehow related to your computer or connection.

You can find hundreds of web based proxies at Proxy.org. Try some and see if you can connect to the website.

5. Ask someone

If you have direct contact to other users, be it in IRC, Skype, Instant Messengers or even forums, you can ask them if they would be kind enough to check a particular website for you. That`s practically a substitute to using a proxy.

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Comments

  1. Kevin Storm said on May 12, 2020 at 11:22 pm
    Reply

    Every time I need to check if a Webseite is up I use

    https://www.ip-toolbox.com/other-tools/website-availability/ or https://www.ip-toolbox.com/ping/

    Love this Page and use it since 2018

  2. Harry Fear said on July 14, 2018 at 4:56 pm
    Reply

    Hi,

    I’ve reinstated this notify me service:

    https://notifymewhenitsup.com/

    I hope someone finds the service and its bookmarklet useful!

  3. geekonweb said on June 19, 2014 at 7:11 pm
    Reply

    Ping testing can also be done at http://www.pingstest.com/

  4. isthatsitedown said on March 12, 2010 at 12:54 pm
    Reply

    you can use “http://isthatsitedown.com which has more advantages like check many sites in one click

  5. Peter Caar said on February 14, 2010 at 4:45 pm
    Reply

    I always use down.io, other domains are so long :-(

  6. Tom said on January 20, 2010 at 8:55 pm
    Reply

    This website helps me alot because my portfoliowebsite is often down :(

    http://www.downorjustforme.com

    Greetz :)

  7. John said on October 3, 2009 at 3:37 pm
    Reply

    Great site. I got here through google when I was googling to check if my website was down.

    I came across http://www.checksite.us. It’s the similiar to downforeveryoneorjustme.com, except it kept checking every 30 minutes for me and then sent me an email.

    iPower is my host which had a massive datacenter failure the other day.

  8. Don said on September 25, 2009 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    I tend to use http://www.ismywebsiteonline.com
    This is a simple – and free! service, where you get an email immediately if your site is down, they check from 12 or so locations across the globe. For a little extra they can also send you an sms, which is even better when you’re on the road

  9. amdou said on August 10, 2009 at 9:11 pm
    Reply

    i liked this one, plain and simple…

    http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

  10. loki said on May 20, 2009 at 5:20 am
    Reply

    simple tool to check if a url is up or down from the address bar: queryurl.com/urltotest.com

  11. Egyptian Papyrus said on April 21, 2009 at 10:49 pm
    Reply

    I really just use a service to check my site every 30 minutes and It’s free…

    1. Martin said on April 22, 2009 at 10:27 am
      Reply

      It really depends on the website that you run. A webmaster who makes $100 an hours from his website would lose $50 (plus visitors, perception etc) if the website would go down and a script would notify him 30 minutes later.

  12. Nathan said on February 25, 2009 at 3:13 am
    Reply

    Another free and easy to use method to check if a website is up: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9689

    Also capable of doing extra functions such as IP lookups, reverse lookups, etc.

  13. Fazirul said on August 8, 2008 at 9:40 am
    Reply

    FREE text based website check very fast, see this link http://www.mywebkpi.com/cgi-bin/start-cgi
    Personally using this to check 50 websites thats under my company’s care for the past year. Works well for me.

  14. Yonatan said on March 17, 2008 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    A handy firefox extension for this is ErrorZilla Mod: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3336

  15. OldSailor said on March 16, 2008 at 10:30 pm
    Reply

    Very useful tip as everyone faces this problem of website down.

  16. Kris said on March 16, 2008 at 9:38 pm
    Reply

    My go-to site for checking whether a site is up is….

    …. the W3C HTML validator: validator.w3.org

  17. Moose said on March 16, 2008 at 5:30 pm
    Reply

    One of my favourite tools for this is the netmonitor website – they have a tool called SiteUp, which combines ping, DNS, traceroute and an actual attempt to get pages from a site for you…

    e.g http://www.netmonitor.org/tools/siteupresults.php?site=www.ghacks.net

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