Server is taking too long to respond - What does this mean?
-
A client has 3 sites that he would like for me to look at. Whenever I attempt to on my home internet I get this message:
The connection has timed out
The server is taking too long to respond.When I take my iphone off wifi and use AT&T, the site comes up fine. What is going on here?
-
More than likely it was one 3 things, a DNS issue, a peering issue, or a temp ban.
If you were currently ftp'ing into the site and had too many threads open, usually above 4 or 5 but all depends on the server setting. They can issue a temporary ban on your ip address for the site. Depending on how the server is set up, you can either get an explicit message, which is bad. Or you can just get an error like you, which is good and it means the server is shedding the load.
A DNS issue could be that a name server is down somewhere or having other problems. You generally cannot do anything about this and they are generally fixed quickly because of the amount of sites / information hosted on them is vital.
A peering problem, like a DNS issue is usually spotty. More than likely that is what was happening. A peering issue means you cannot access the "chunk" of internet that the peer directs traffic through. So say you can access 99.9% of everything you want, because it is not going through the peer with the issues.
The best tools you can use to diagnose these problems are TOR, it is a socks proxy that routes your traffic so essentially you will be accessing the site through another isp, who could not be having peering or DNS issues with the hosting isp. Also you can use http://www.whatsmydns.net/ which will let you know what different dns servers around the world are returning. It will let you know if a major DNS server is having an issue. For general checking you can use this as well, http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
-
Check with the IT folks or hosting service for your client. I think this is an outside chance, but if you have been running spiders from your home computer to check the site, you may have been hitting it too hard and slowed the site down and the server may be blocking your IP as you are seen as a spammer. That is why you change ISPs you are golden as you are seen as a different "user".
I took down one of our sites once with a spidering tool. They were pushing new code right when I hit the site. Also, the number of requests a second I thought were ok, well, it was during peak traffic time. (DOH!)
I adjusted my crawl rate down and everything was ok. Again, this is just a guess, but worth checking considering your symptoms.
Good luck!
-
Yeah they all work for me too.
So this remains one of the weirder topics on here but for different reasons than I first suspected. ..I'm really not sure what to tell you. Sorry.
-
They all work for me
the topsmagic site takes a while to load though -
-
that's weird. what are the domains let's see if I can access them?
-
Wait are you saying this is just for your clients' sites? You can access other sites just fine? That's how you posted this question?
Sorry i'm confused.
-
My internet is working fine. I'm on moz.org right now using my internet. It's only when I attempt to visit those 3 websites.
-
Your internet and/or router is down..? Yeah I'd power-cycle the router and modem and try again. Or contact your cable company.
No offense but this is one of the weirdest Q&A posts I've seen here. I'm having a weird morning though so it totally fits.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Homepage Not Ranking in Google - How long do old (not current) bad SEO practices exert influence?
I'm trying to get to the bottom of a problem I have with the Google ranking for mauiactivities.com - it's far below what I would hope for. My research so far has uncovered the following, and any advice on where to go from here would be appreciated. _Edit:_No problems with Bing or Yahoo - the site is #1 for primary key word 'maui activities' 1. Running a site:http://www.mauiactivities.com search in Google reveals that the homepage doesn't rank. At all. I looked through the 17 pages of results and can't spot it. Edit: I have now, after fresh checks after submitting the homepage through Search Console, found it at #1 - still, the following applies ... 2. I've found that the domain (before it was purchased by my client in 2011) had some bad inbound links, specifically from scubamaui.com (no longer active). The links where white, on a white background. This web archive snapshot will reveal all. 3. Those bad links were 'cleaned up' (i.e. they don't show in the web archive) from 2014, and as mentioned above, the website is now 'down'. 4. Search Console doesn't have a manual penalty. 5. When I search for 'tropical divers maui' in Google I find www.mauiactivities.com is the 4th result. To me, this indicates a current relationship with the dead site (Tropical Divers Maui). No other term comes close to ranking to high for the homepage. So, to summarise - can the old, dead Tropical Divers Maui website still be affecting the Google ranking, and what would you suggest I do next?
Technical SEO | | jsherwin0 -
Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS - How long does it take Google to re-index the site?
hello Moz We know that this year, Moz changed its domain to moz.com from www.seomoz.org
Technical SEO | | joony
however, when you type "site:seomoz.org" you still can find old urls indexed on Google (on page 7 and above) We also changed our site from http://www.example.com to https://www.example.com
And Google is indexing both sites even though we did proper 301 redirection via htaccess. How long would it take Google to refresh the index? We just don't worry about it? Say we redirected our entire site. What is going to happen to those websites that copied and pasted our content? We have already DMCAed their webpages, but making our site https would mean that their website is now more original than our site? Thus, Google assumes that we have copied their site? (Google is very slow on responding to our DMCA complaint) Thank you in advance for your reply.0 -
Rel="Follow"? What the &#@? does that mean?
I've written a guest blog post for a site. In the link back to my site they've put a rel="follow" attribute. Is that valid HTML? I've Googled it but the answers are inconclusive, to say the least.
Technical SEO | | Jeepster0 -
What does this error mean?
We recently merged our Google + & Google Local pages and sent a request to Webmaster tools to connect the Google + page to our website. The message was successfully sent. However, when clicking the 'Approve or reject this request' link, the following error message appears: 'Can't find associate request' Anyone know what we are doing incorrectly? Thanks in advance for any insight.
Technical SEO | | SEOSponge0 -
What steps can you take to help a site that does not change
Hi, i am working on a product and services website www.clairehegarty.co.uk but the problem i have is, the site does not really change. The home page stays the same and the only time it changes is when a new course is advertised. The most important page on the website is http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy but we have seen the site drop in rankings because the page is not being updated. This page has all the information you could want on weight loss but we have seen the page drop from number one in google to number four. I would like to know what steps we should take to increase our rankings in google and would be grateful for your suggestions. If i put in articles on the site, had a section where we put a new article every week, would this then get google to visit the whole site more and move our pages back up the rankings, or should we be looking at doing other things.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Links from the same server has value or not
Hi Guys, Sometime ago one of the SEO experts said to me if I get links from the same IP address, Google doesn't count them as with much value. For an example, I am a web devleoper and I host all my clients websites on one server and link them back to me. Im wondering whether those links have any value when it comes to seo or should I consider getting different hosting providers? Regards Uds
Technical SEO | | Uds0 -
Why does it take so long for my TITLE tag it show ??
Hi Guys, I am frustrated here! I have changed my title tag so that I get a much better CTR. But I changed it a week ago and it is still howing the old title tag in the SERPS. Can anyone please tell me how long Google can take to show the new title tag in the search results?? Can it take weeks?? Thanks guys Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Long Meta Descriptions
I want to create a template for Meta titles, descriptions and keywords on my website for old news and minor pages in order to get some long tail traffic from them. The only template I can think to use for the descriptions takes the first sentence of the news article (which often if above 160 characters). Since these are minor pages, how big of a problem is that? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0