You're staring at a spinning wheel. It’s frustrating. You’ve refreshed the page three times, toggled your Wi-Fi, and even considered restarting your router, but the site just won’t budge. Is it them? Is it you? Knowing how to check if website is available is honestly one of those basic digital survival skills that most people think they have handled until the screen goes white and they start clicking randomly in a panic.
It’s rarely just a "yes" or "no" situation. Sometimes a site is up for your friend in London but dead for you in New York. Sometimes it’s a DNS cache issue that makes you look like the crazy one while everyone else is scrolling through the homepage just fine. We need to talk about why websites go dark and the actual, non-nonsense ways to figure out if a server is breathing or if the internet is just gaslighting you today.
Why "Is it down for everyone?" is the wrong first question
Most of us immediately head to a status checker. That's fine, but it’s a bit like checking the national weather when your basement is flooding. You need local data first. Before you go hunting for a global outage, you’ve gotta rule out the "You" factor. Browser extensions, aggressive VPN settings, or a wonky ISP (Internet Service Provider) can make a perfectly healthy website look like a 404 graveyard.
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I’ve seen cases where a site appeared "down" for an entire office building simply because their internal firewall decided a new update was "suspicious." If you're trying to check if website is available, start by trying a different device on a different network—like switching your phone from Wi-Fi to cellular data. If it loads on your 5G but not your laptop, the website isn't the problem. You are. Or rather, your network is.
The DNS Trap
DNS (Domain Name System) is basically the phonebook of the internet. Sometimes, the phonebook gets a coffee stain on it. When you type in a URL, your computer asks a DNS server for the IP address. If that server is slow or has cached an old, broken record, you’ll get a "Site Not Found" error. This is why "flushing your DNS" is such a common piece of advice. It’s not just tech-support jargon; it’s literally clearing out the old, wrong directions so your computer can ask for fresh ones.
Professional tools to check if website is available
When you’ve confirmed it’s not just your Wi-Fi acting up, it’s time to use the heavy hitters. You don't need a degree in computer science, but you should know which tools actually give you real-time data versus those that just scrape old reports.
Down For Everyone Or Just Me is the classic. It’s simple. It does one thing. It pings the server from its own location and tells you if it got a response. But it has limitations. It only checks from one or two locations. If a site is having a regional outage—say, a Google Cloud bucket in Northern Virginia is melting down—this tool might say the site is "up" because its own servers are in California and aren't affected.
For a more nuanced look, I prefer Pingdom or Site24x7. These are technically "pro" tools, but they have free search bars. They allow you to test the site from multiple geographic locations like Frankfurt, Singapore, or Sydney. If the site is green in Europe but red in the US, you know there’s a localized infrastructure issue.
- IsUp.me: Fast, minimalist, no ads.
- DownDetector: Best for big platforms like Netflix or X (Twitter) because it relies on user reports. If 5,000 people just shouted "it's broken," it’s broken.
- Google Search Console: If you own the site, this is your source of truth for crawl errors.
- Host Tracker: Great for checking if the site is blocked in specific countries like China.
The "Ping" command: Your secret weapon
You don't need a website to check if website is available. You have a terminal. On Windows, hit the Start key, type cmd, and press Enter. On a Mac, open Terminal. Type ping google.com (replace with whatever site you’re checking).
If you see "Request timed out" four times in a row, the server isn't responding to basic communication. If you see "Reply from...", the server is alive. If you get a reply but the website won't load in Chrome, the problem is likely at the "Application Layer"—meaning the web server software (like Nginx or Apache) is crashed, even though the hardware is technically "on." This is a huge distinction. A server that pings but won't load a page is often a sign of a database error or a bad plugin update.
What if the site is up but "Not Secure"?
This is a common hurdle when you try to check if website is available. You get a giant red warning from Chrome saying "Your connection is not private." The site is technically available, but its SSL certificate has expired. Most people see this and run away, thinking they're being hacked.
In reality, it’s usually just a lazy webmaster who forgot to renew a $10 certificate. You can technically bypass this by clicking "Advanced" and "Proceed," but honestly, don't do that if you're planning on entering a credit card or a password. If it's just a blog you're reading, it's probably fine, but the "unavailability" here is a trust issue, not a technical one.
Misconceptions about "Uptime"
We talk about 99.9% uptime like it’s the holy grail. But 99.9% uptime actually allows for nearly 9 hours of downtime a year. If you happen to visit during those 9 hours, the site is "unavailable" to you, even if the company claims it has a perfect record.
Also, "availability" isn't the same as "functionality." A site might load the homepage (available) but the "Check Out" button doesn't work (non-functional). Most automated checkers only look at the homepage. They don't check if the backend database is actually processing requests. This is why businesses use "Synthetic Monitoring"—bots that act like humans, clicking buttons every minute to make sure the site isn't just a pretty, broken shell.
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The role of CDNs in website availability
Most big sites today use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare or Akamai. This complicates the whole "is it down" question. A CDN keeps a "cached" or saved version of the website on thousands of servers around the world.
If the main server (the "origin") goes down, the CDN might still show you the cached version of the page. You might be able to read an article, but you can't log in or post a comment. In this case, is the website available? Kinda. It's in "Always Online" mode. If you see a Cloudflare branded error page, it usually means the CDN is working fine, but it can't talk to the actual website server.
Real-world example: The Fastly Outage
Back in 2021, a huge chunk of the internet—Reddit, Twitch, The New York Times—disappeared for about an hour. People were frantically trying to check if website is available for their favorite spots, but the tools themselves were failing. Why? Because the outage was at the CDN level (Fastly). When the "infrastructure" fails, even the checkers go down. This is the "Inception" of web outages.
How to check if a site is available for purchase
Sometimes people aren't checking if a site is "down," they're checking if the domain name is available to buy. This is a totally different ballgame. You don't use DownDetector for this; you use a "WHOIS" lookup.
Go to a site like ICANN Lookup or WHOIS.com. If you type in a name and see a bunch of contact info for a guy in Delaware, it's taken. If it says "Not found" or "Available," you’re in luck. But be careful. If you search for a high-value domain on a sketchy registrar's site, some people claim they might "squat" on it—buying it themselves just to sell it to you for more money five minutes later. Stick to reputable lookups.
Handling "False Positives"
I've had clients call me screaming that their site is down, only for me to find out they just haven't cleared their browser cache in three years. Your browser tries to be helpful by saving parts of websites so they load faster next time. But if a site goes down and then comes back up, your browser might still be trying to show you the "down" version it saved ten minutes ago.
The "Incognito" Trick: Always check if website is available in an Incognito or Private window. This forces the browser to ignore most of its saved junk and go grab a fresh copy of the site from the wild. It’s the fastest "fix" in the book.
Actionable steps when a site won't load
If you're stuck, follow this sequence. It's the most logical way to narrow down the problem without wasting time.
- The "One-Two" Device Test: Try it on your phone on 5G. If it works there, the problem is your local Wi-Fi or computer. Restart your browser or flush your DNS.
- Use a Multi-Regional Checker: Hit up a tool like Site24x7 to see if the site is down globally or just in your city.
- Check Social Media: Go to X (Twitter) and search for the website name plus "down." If it’s a big site, people will be complaining in real-time. This is often faster than any official status page.
- Look at the Error Code:
- 500 Internal Server Error: Their fault. Their code is broken.
- 502/503/504: Their fault. Their server is overloaded or the "gateway" is stuck.
- 403 Forbidden: You're blocked (maybe your IP is flagged).
- 404 Not Found: The site exists, but that specific page is gone.
- Check the Official Status Page: Most big tech companies (AWS, Salesforce, Microsoft 365) have a dedicated status page (e.g., https://www.google.com/search?q=status.aws.amazon.com). Check there for "known incidents."
Wait it out. If it's a major 500-level error, there is literally nothing you can do but wait for a very stressed engineer somewhere to fix it. Grab a coffee, stop refreshing, and check back in fifteen minutes. Most major outages are resolved within an hour because every minute of downtime costs these companies thousands of dollars.