To tell whether your website is down—and get useful clues about why—monitor a representative page or endpoint from outside your hosting environment. Check the expected HTTP status and, if useful, a stable response marker; use more than one location; and alert someone who can investigate. For important tasks such as logging in or checking out, add a scripted synthetic test: a basic uptime check can succeed even when the site’s assets or interactive features are broken.
Decide what “available” means for your site
A site can return a successful response while still failing for visitors. Start by defining the outcome you need to monitor:
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- Public reachability: Can an unauthenticated visitor load the public landing page?
- Protected access: Can an authenticated user reach a key account page?
- Successful task: Can a customer complete a transaction or another critical workflow?
An HTTP, HTTPS, or TCP check can answer basic reachability questions. A scripted synthetic test is more appropriate when you need to verify application behavior such as login, search, form submission, or checkout. Google Cloud distinguishes public uptime checks from scripted synthetic monitors, while Pingdom describes transaction monitoring for user workflows. Google Cloud’s synthetic monitoring overview and Pingdom’s uptime monitoring documentation explain these approaches.
Set up an uptime check that measures the right thing
Choose a representative endpoint
Monitor a stable URL that exercises the service you care about. A public home page may be enough to detect broad reachability problems, but a health endpoint or specific route may better reflect whether a backend service is responding. Make sure the check targets the intended hostname and path; a typo can create an alert that looks like an outage.
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Define the expected response
Configure the status codes that count as success and, where it adds confidence, match a stable piece of response content. Google Cloud HTTP checks accept 2xx responses by default, but the expected status can be configured. They follow redirects and evaluate the final response. A generic error page could accidentally satisfy a loose content check, while a marker that changes during a deployment could cause a false failure. See Google Cloud’s public uptime check documentation for its check behavior and options.
Validate HTTPS certificates
For HTTPS endpoints, check that the monitor validates the certificate and consider alerting on certificate expiry if the service supports it. A TLS failure can prevent a valid connection even when the web server is running. Certificate validation details and failure conditions differ by monitoring service, so confirm how the chosen check handles hostname matching, trust, and expiry in its documentation. Google Cloud describes certificate validation and expiry metrics in its uptime check documentation.
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Use more than one monitoring location
Choose probe locations that reflect where your important visitors are. A failure seen across multiple locations is stronger evidence of a broad incident than a single probe’s failure; one checker may be affected by temporary network congestion. Google Cloud notes that its default alert configuration does not notify on a failure from only one checker, and Pingdom describes checks from multiple worldwide locations. See Google Cloud’s uptime check guidance and Pingdom’s monitoring overview.
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Make alerts actionable
Send alerts to a monitored channel and include the URL, time, probe location, protocol, error or status, and any recent deployment or configuration change. Tune retries, confirmation checks, and alert thresholds to balance fast detection against transient failures. There is no universal correct threshold: it depends on the service’s impact and how quickly someone is expected to respond. Available alert controls vary by provider and plan.
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Add tests for the visitor experience
A basic uptime check does not normally load page assets or execute JavaScript. It can therefore report success when styles, scripts, images, or an interactive workflow are failing. Google Cloud documents this limitation for basic checks and supports scripted synthetic monitoring for application behavior. Pingdom describes transaction monitoring and real-user monitoring as separate capabilities. Google Cloud’s overview and Pingdom’s documentation describe the distinction.
- Synthetic tests run controlled, repeatable checks of a specific journey, such as signing in or completing checkout.
- Real-user monitoring helps investigate the experience of actual visitors rather than relying only on scheduled probes.
Use a separate test for each critical journey. A successful homepage check cannot establish that a protected route or purchase flow works.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Diagnose an alert from the observed failure
Read the result before changing configuration. An error is a clue about which layer to investigate, not proof of a root cause. Compare probe locations and consult the monitoring provider’s troubleshooting guidance; Google Cloud lists the following common failure messages and possible causes in its uptime check troubleshooting guide.
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| Observation | First checks | What it may indicate |
|---|---|---|
| Connection refused | Confirm the web service is running and listening on the expected host and port. Check firewall rules and network policies. | The server may be missing or unresponsive, or traffic may be blocked. |
| Hostname or service not found | Check the hostname spelling, DNS records, resolver behavior, and whether the check targets the intended host. | The hostname may be incorrect or name resolution may be failing. |
| HTTP 403 | Review access controls, allowlists, authentication, and virtual-host configuration. Confirm the monitor is permitted to make the request. | The server may be denying the check, including through its default configuration. |
| HTTP 404 | Verify the configured path, routing, redirects, and any recent deployment changes. | The requested path may be incorrect or no longer served. |
| Timeout or no response | Check the port, service health, accessibility, firewall rules, timeout setting, and network congestion. Compare other probe locations. | The service may be slow or unreachable, but a single probe can also be affected by congestion. |
| TLS or certificate failure | Check certificate expiry, trust, hostname match, and the monitor’s TLS-validation settings. | The HTTPS connection may fail validation even if the server is reachable. |
| HTTP check passes but the page or workflow is broken | Inspect browser assets and client-side errors, check backend dependencies, and run a scripted test of the affected journey. | The endpoint responds, but the browser experience or application behavior may still be failing. |
Use network checks as supporting evidence
If your monitoring service supports ICMP ping, its result can help distinguish basic network reachability problems from application timeouts. Google Cloud allows up to three pings on a public check. A successful ping does not prove the website works, and a failed ping alone does not identify the cause; interpret it alongside the HTTP result and application evidence. Details are in Google Cloud’s public uptime check documentation and its troubleshooting guide.
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Check hosting, DNS, CDN, and other providers
During an incident, compare your independent checks with status information from relevant hosting, DNS, CDN, and monitoring providers. A provider’s reported incident is useful evidence, but it does not replace your own endpoint results or application logs.
For Cloudflare, use its status page or machine-readable API rather than scraping status-page HTML for automation. Cloudflare advises automated clients to poll the API and use an identifiable User-Agent. See Cloudflare’s status documentation and Cloudflare Health Checks.
Compare monitoring services by capability
Google Cloud Monitoring, Pingdom, and Cloudflare Health Checks are documented examples, not a ranked recommendation. Match a service to the depth of monitoring and evidence your site needs:
| What to compare | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Check type | Does it support HTTP/HTTPS or TCP checks, and can it run scripted journeys such as login or checkout? |
| Geographic coverage | Can checks run in locations relevant to your visitors or the regions you serve? |
| Response validation | Can you set acceptable status codes, match response content, handle redirects, validate TLS, and monitor certificate expiry? |
| Alert controls | Can you configure notification channels, retries or confirmation checks, delays, thresholds, and integrations? |
| Diagnostic evidence | Does it expose error categories, response details, latency history, or network signals that help isolate a failure? |
| Visitor experience | Does it include real-user monitoring as well as synthetic probes? |
Confirm current features and plan limits with the provider before choosing; these can change. For a site already using Cloudflare, its Health Checks documentation describes origin monitoring. Google Cloud and Pingdom document broader uptime-check and monitoring capabilities in their respective Google Cloud documentation and Pingdom overview.
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