The HTTP status codes in our reports inform you about the state of a web page.
There are close to a hundred different status codes, but it’s very likely that you are only going to encounter a handful of them.
In this post, we’d like to introduce the most frequent HTTP status codes and give you a few tips on what to do when they appear in our reports.
200 - Everything is OK.
If you see this number in the HTTP status field it means that the monitored web page is available.
301 - Moved permanently.
The status codes that begin with number 3 refer to some kind of redirect.
301 means that the web page that you monitor has been moved to a new address and it is not going to return to the previous one.
302 - Temporary redirect.
This status code indicates that the monitored page has moved to a new address temporarily.
If a URL is redirected and the webpage’s response code is 301 or 302 the visitors will arrive at another address when they type it into their browser.
In this respect there is no difference between these two codes. But search engines handle these responses differently.
When they encounter a 301 redirect they stop at index the web page and the links pointing to that page will help the page on the new address to rank better. In the case of a 302 redirect the links pointing to the old address won't help the page on the new one.
403 - Access denied.
Status codes beginning with four indicate some kind of problem.
The 403 error code shows that, even though a page is working properly, you are not authorized to download its contents.
You can expect to see this status code if you monitor a web page that has password protected content. If this is not the case you should try to find out what went wrong.
404 - The page is not available.
You must have seen this error code several hundred times. If you wouldn’t like to use the monitored web page any more it could be an appropriate response. If you do, try to figure out what went wrong.
In case, the content of a web page that you’re about to delete will be available elsewhere on your site, it's better to set up a 301 than a 404 response code to its address.
410 - The page is gone.
The 410 status code is similar to the 404, it shows that the page that you requested is not available, but unlike the 404 it also indicates that the page is gone forever.
When search engines encounter a 404 status code they may try to visit the page at a later time. In the case of a 410, they won’t make another attempt.
500 - Internal server error.
The HTTP status codes beginning with number 5 refer to a server error.
The 500 status code indicates that there’s some kind of problem with your server, but it does not specify the nature of the problem.
If you see this status code in our reports and you monitor your own site with WebyMon, you should contact you hosting service provider and ask them to look into the problem.
503 - The server is temporarily unavailable.
This error code could indicate that the traffic or an attack overloads the server that you monitor, but can also appear during maintenance.
If one of your pages gives this response for a longer period of time, you should also contact your hosting service provider.