What We Learned About Temporarily Disabling a Website

When a website needs to temporarily go offline, managing the downtime correctly is critical to avoiding negative impacts on indexing and organic search performance. Google generally advises against shutting down an entire site, but sometimes it’s unavoidable due to server migrations, maintenance, or emergencies.

The Challenge: Minimizing Downtime’s Impact on Indexing and Organic Performance

We recently worked with a client who operates a massive website with tens of millions of pages. They needed to move their servers, which required a two-day shutdown. Their primary concern was ensuring that the downtime wouldn’t cause lasting damage to their search rankings and indexing.

The Process: How We Mitigated the Risks

To manage this challenge, we followed best practices to minimize downtime’s impact:

1. Using a 503 HTTP Response Code
   Instead of a blank page, we implemented a 503 Service Unavailable response code. This tells search engines the downtime is intentional and temporary, ensuring they don’t interpret the site as permanently gone.
2. Setting a Retry-After Header
   We added a Retry-After HTTP header to inform crawlers when they should return. This reduced unnecessary load on the server and helped Google understand the temporary nature of the downtime.
3. Creating a User-Friendly Error Page
   To avoid frustrating visitors, we designed an error page that clearly communicated the situation. It included the expected downtime, a contact option for urgent queries, and links to social media for updates. For example: 

We’re Temporarily Down for Maintenance
Thank you for visiting our website! We’re currently performing scheduled maintenance to improve your experience.
We expect to be back online by [date].
For urgent queries, contact us at: [email protected].
Follow us for updates: [Twitter] [Facebook] [LinkedIn]

What We Learned: Dos & Don’ts

Through this experience, we discovered some key dos and don’ts to manage temporary website downtime effectively:

Dos:

• Use a 503 Service Unavailable Response with a Retry-After header to signal temporary downtime to search engines.
• Provide a Clear, Informative Error Page to keep users in the loop and prevent frustration.

Don’ts:

• Don’t Block robots.txt With a 503 Status — Blocking crawlers can cause indexing issues.
• Don’t Use 403, 404, or 410 Status Codes — These suggest that pages have been permanently removed, risking deindexing.
• Don’t Use Google’s Temporary Website Removal Tool — It’s for sensitive content removal, not planned downtime, and using it incorrectly could hurt rankings.
• Don’t Adjust Crawl Rate in Google Search Console — Lowering the crawl rate isn’t necessary for short downtimes and could delay recovery.

Key Takeaways:

• Always use a 503 Service Unavailable response with a Retry-After header.
• Provide a clear, informative error page for users.
• Avoid actions that could permanently remove your site from search results.
• Keep downtime as short as possible to maintain organic performance.

By following these practices, we ensured our client’s website recovered quickly without significant ranking losses. Proper planning and execution made all the difference in minimizing downtime impact.