When it comes to selecting a web host, many companies look for hosts that offer uptime guarantees of 99 percent or better. What they don’t realize is that the guarantees offered by web hosting companies are often worth little more than the paper the guarantee would be written on if they were actually indeed written on paper. Before you choose a website host based on the uptime they advertise and guarantee, there are a few things you need to know.

Website monitoring services have become increasingly popular in recent years. This is largely due to the fact that business owners are beginning to realize just how much of an impact website downtime can have on their bottom line. If you’re still not sure whether or not website monitoring is worth investing in, take the following factors into consideration.

Most website owners don’t lay awake at night worrying about whether or not their website is going down. Website downtime is, however, a concern that does tend to cross one’s mind every so often. In all reality, any webmaster should make website uptime a priority. Not only can website downtime cost you customers, it can also impact your search engine rankings. Here are five things you need to do before your website goes down to ensure that when the inevitable does occur, you’re ready for it.

Today many Facebook users woke up to realize that their Facebook accounts were not accessible from their computers. While the mobile app seemed to be working, the actual website itself was down for many. The problem, however, did not seem to be global. While some users reported being able to access their Facebook accounts (such as those in Mexico, Austria, and Canada), others (such as those in the United States) were left without the ability to indulge in their morning Facebook routine.

When it comes to website downtime, many worry about what effect it will have on their search engine rankings. More to the point, they worry about what effect it will have on their Google rankings. While we at Alertra have explained to our readers what measures they can put into place to ensure that website downtime has a minimal effect, if any, on their search engine presence, it is important to remember that Google isn’t your customer.

Here at Alertra we’ve discussed finding the best website host to serve your company’s needs. However, if you do discover that your current host isn’t everything it promised to be and you do decide to move your blog, there are measures you are going to want to put into place to ensure that the move itself doesn’t cause your site to experience unnecessary downtime. If you plan on moving your website to a different hosting provider, keep the following tips in mind to minimize the downtime your site experiences.

A number of today's websites rely quite a bit on external cloud services. Many websites utilize a number of external services that make up different components of the site. For example, the third-party advertising and social media controls that you integrate into your site may be hosted on cloud services. If any of the resources that your site uses crash, it can significantly hinder your site's performance and appearance or, even worse, bring your site down entirely. Amazon is a perfect example of what can happen when cloud services go bad.

The goal of a website monitoring service is to alert you the moment your website goes down. The idea behind this is that the sooner you know your site is experiencing downtime, the sooner you can go to work to get your site back up and running. After all, every minute of downtime equates to a loss of potential profits. Exactly how much downtime does the average site experience? Furthermore, how much does website downtime really cost?

In the world of website monitoring and server monitoring, not all services are created equal. This is exemplified by how the various monitoring services on the Web actually perform their website monitoring functions. For example, if your site runs into a DNS outage, will your website monitor really know about it the second it happens? The only way to know that is to know how your monitoring service actually checks for website uptime and downtime. Here are some things to consider when choosing a website monitoring service to protect your website's uptime.

When your website monitor notifies you that your website has gone down, your first reaction is probably to worry about the customers who are trying to access your site during the downtime. What you may not realize is that the search engines may be crawling your site at the very same time. What happens if a search engine crawls your site during a website outage? If you don't have the proper error codes in place, the search engine may assume that your website is offline permanently and may remove you from its results.