Uptime.com Blog

What Are the Top Reasons Websites Go Down?

When your website goes down, your company loses valuable selling time with customers, along with reducing customer confidence in your business. While it’s important to keep your site running at all times, what are the top reasons your site could go down in the first place?

Let’s look at some of the top reasons why:

Server overload: This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Businesses that hit it big, perhaps receiving a good piece of press or appearing on a popular TV show, can get a flood of traffic to their site. If the site’s servers cannot handle that volume the site will crash and no one can use it. If you are expecting a surge in traffic, work with your service provider to be ready and if they can’t accommodate you, look for an alternative provider.

Cybersecurity breach: Hackers can infiltrate your site and plant malicious code. If scanners such as rhe Google Search Index label your site as compromised it will make it will send visitors a warning, causing you to lose traffic. Hackers can also issue a denial of service attack where they intentionally flood your site with traffic in an effort to crash the servers. They may do this as a way to hold your site hostage, requiring a ransom to stop the attack.

DNS changes: You know websites by names, but they are all actually listed by numbers. Sometimes those numbers change, but the name does not change along with it. It’s similar to someone changing your home address and then not telling anyone about it, making you impossible to find. If there is an issue with your site’s address, it could cause your traffic to dramatically drop of stop altogether.

Datacenter issues: The datacenter that hosts your site is an actual physical place. While they are typically put in safe places with little risk of outside factors like natural disasters, things do happen. A problem at your datacenter, such as a power outage, can cause your site to crash.

Michael Esposito