Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | Sep 23, 2023, 10:06 PM | Breemcc0 -
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | Mar 4, 2023, 7:39 AM | RocketStats0 -
How long does Google takes to re-index title tags?
Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks
Technical SEO | May 9, 2016, 12:37 PM | Kilgray0 -
Server Connection Error when using Google Speed Test Insight and GTMetrix
Hi Guys, Recently got into the issue when testing load speed of my website (https://solvid.co.uk). Occasionally, Google Speed Insights gives me a server connection error which states _"PageSpeed was unable to connect to the server. Ensure that you are using the correct protocol (_http vs https), the page loads in a browser, and is accessible on the public internet." Also, GTMetrix gives me an error as well, which states the following: "An error occurred fetching the page: HTTPS error: SSl connect attempt failed" All of my redirects seem to be set-up correctly as well as the SSL certificate. I've contacted my hosting provider (godaddy), they are saying that everything is fine with the server and the installation. Also, tried in different browsers in incognito mode, still gives me the same error. Until yesterday I haven't had such a problem. I've also attached the error screenshot links. I would really appreciate your help! Dmytro UxchPYR M52iPDf
Technical SEO | Apr 6, 2016, 4:09 PM | solvid1 -
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 | Sep 20, 2012, 2:37 PM | Uds0 -
Hosting sitemap on another server
I was looking into XML sitemap generators and one that seems to be recommended quite a bit on the forums is the xml-sitemaps.com They have a few versions though. I'll need more than 500 pages indexed, so it is just a case of whether I go for their paid for version and install on our server or go for their pro-sitemaps.com offering. For the pro-sitemaps.com they say: "We host your sitemap files on our server and ping search engines automatically" My question is will this be less effective than my installing it on our server from an SEO perspective because it is no longer on our root domain?
Technical SEO | Jul 16, 2012, 8:44 AM | design_man0 -
On a dedicated server with multiple IP addresses, how can one address group be slow/time out and all other IP addresses OK?
We utilize a dedicated server to host roughly 60 sites on. The server is with a company that utilizes a lady who drives race cars.... About 4 months ago we realized we had a group of sites down thanks to monitoring alerts and checked it out. All were on the same IP address and the sites on the other IP address were still up and functioning well. When we contacted the support at first we were stonewalled, but eventually they said there was a problem and it was resolved within about 2 hours. Up until recently we had no problems. As a part of our ongoing SEO we check page load speed for our clients. A few days ago a client who has their site hosted by the same company was running very slow (about 8 seconds to load without cache). We ran every check we could and could not find a reason on our end. The client called the host and were told they needed to be on some other type of server (with the host) at a fee increase of roughly $10 per month. Yesterday, we noticed one group of sites on our server was down and, again, it was one IP address with about 8 sites on it. On chat with support, they kept saying it was our ISP. (We speed tested on multiple computers and were 22MB down and 9MB up +/-2MB). We ran a trace on the IP address and it went through without a problem on three occassions over about ten minutes. After about 30 minutes the sites were back up. Here's the twist: we had a couple of people in the building who were on other ISP's try and the sites came up and loaded on their machines. Does anyone have any idea as to what the issue is?
Technical SEO | Sep 4, 2011, 7:13 AM | RobertFisher0 -
Using a third party server to host site elements
Hi guys - I have a client who are recently experiencing a great deal of more traffic to their site. As a result, their web development agency have given them a server upgrade to cope with the new demand. One thing they have also done is put all website scripts, CSS files, images, downloadable content (such as PDFs) - onto a 3rd party server (Amazon S3). Apparently this was done so that my clients server just handles the page requests now - and all other elements are then grabbed from the Amazon s3 server. So basically, this means any HTML content and web pages are still hosted through my clients domain - but all other content is accessible through an Amazon s3 server URL. I'm wondering what SEO implications this will have for my clients domain? While all pages and HTML content is still accessible thorugh their domain name, each page is of course now making many server calls to the Amazon s3 server through external URLs (s3.amazonaws.com). I imagine this will mean any elements sitting on the Amazon S3 server can no longer contribute value to the clients SEO profile - because that actual content is not physically part of their domain anymore. However what I am more concerned about is whether all of these external server calls are going to have a negative effect on the web pages value overall. Should I be advising my client to ensure all site elements are hosted on their own server, and therefore all elements are accessible through their domain? Hope this makes sense (I'm not the best at explaining things!)
Technical SEO | Mar 13, 2012, 3:18 AM | zealmedia0