Website Down for Maintenance? Tell Google 503, Not 404

Your site goes down for an hour, the hosting company says “we’re working on it,” and you figure Google will understand. Google will not understand. Google is a robot with a schedule, and what it hears from your server matters way more than the apology banner you slapped on the homepage.

This isn’t breaking news. It’s a boring technical thing that’s been in Google’s own documentation for years, and I still see it bite small businesses all the time. So consider it a public service announcement from a guy who has read way too many HTTP status code tables.

The short version

• When your site is temporarily down, the server should answer with a 503, not a 404 or a pile of other errors.
• Per Google’s documentation, URLs that return a 4xx error (except 429) get dropped from the index. A 503 tells Google “come back later.”
• Check what your maintenance page actually returns. A pretty page can still send the wrong signal.

What does Google do when my website returns a 404?

It treats the page as gone. Google’s documentation on how HTTP status codes affect its crawlers says that URLs already in the index that return a 4xx status code get removed, with the exception of 429, which is the “slow down” code.

Gary Illyes of Google said the same thing in a 2023 post on the Search Central blog: all 4xx errors except 429 cause your content to be removed from Google Search. Not “frowned upon.” Removed.

Now picture what that means for a plumber whose site hiccups during a hosting migration. The server throws a 404 or a 403 for a day. Google comes by, shrugs, and starts dropping pages. Nobody told it the outage was temporary, because nobody tells Google anything. (I’ve waited on hold with hosting support longer than most of these outages last, so I get it.)

Is a 503 really better for a temporary outage?

Yes. A 503 means “service unavailable,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Google’s documentation says 5xx and 429 responses make its crawlers slow down, and already-indexed URLs are kept in the index for a while.

Notice the “for a while.” It’s not a forever pass. Google’s docs say pages that keep returning server errors do eventually get dropped. A 503 buys you time. It doesn’t buy you a vacation.

So the rule is simple. Down for a few hours or a day while you fix something? 503. Page permanently deleted? A proper 404 or 410 is fine, or better, a redirect to the closest live page. Mixing those up is how you end up in the awkward spot of wondering why your rankings left without saying goodbye.

How do I check what my maintenance page returns?

Use your browser’s developer tools. Open the Network tab, load the page, and look at the status next to the first request. If your site is in maintenance mode right now and you’re not sure, that’s your answer sitting right there in a little column.

Here’s the catch I see: a lot of maintenance pages look great and return a plain 200 “OK,” which tells Google “everything’s fine, and the page is now a sign that says Be Right Back.” Google may index the sign. Cute for about nine minutes.

If your tool lets you pick the status code, set 503. If it doesn’t, ask whoever built the site. That’s literally a five minute question, and it’s cheaper than finding out the hard way.

Should I do anything else when the site is down?

A few things, and none of them are fancy:

• Keep the downtime short. Even a correct 503 isn’t a free pass if it drags on for days.
• Don’t redirect everything to the homepage during the outage. Google can read that as a soft 404 and you lose the page-level signals.
• Look at Search Console afterward for crawl errors, so you know what Google saw.
• Have a recent backup so you’re fixing, not rebuilding. I wrote about why an untested backup is just a rumor.

Also, a quick plug for monitoring. If a site goes down at 2 AM and nobody notices until a customer texts you, that’s not a server problem, that’s a staffing problem. I run an outreach assistant for other businesses that handles a lot of the “someone should be watching that” busywork, and you can see how it works in the ChenzoBot case study.

Questions people ask

Will one 404 on a single page hurt my whole site’s SEO?

No. A 404 on one page that’s actually gone is normal and fine. The problem is when pages that should exist return 404 by accident, like during a migration or an outage.

What’s the difference between a 503 and a 301 redirect?

A 503 says “I’m temporarily unavailable, try again.” A 301 says “this page moved permanently, go over there.” Use 503 for downtime, 301 when a page really did move.

How long can a site return 503 before Google gives up?

Google doesn’t publish a magic number, and I’m not going to make one up. Its documentation just says indexed URLs are kept for a while, then eventually dropped if the errors continue. Fix it fast.

The boring thing that protects your rankings

Nobody gets excited about status codes. But the difference between “temporarily down” and “gone” is a single three digit number, and it’s the kind of thing a decent web person sets up once so you never think about it. If you’re not sure how your site behaves when it’s down, tell me about your site and I’ll look. And if you want somewhere easy to start with ChenzoBot, the ChenzoBot Starter is below at $50 a month.