How to Monitor Website Uptime and Performance
The Cost of Downtime
Website downtime costs businesses an average of $5,600 per minute. Even brief outages erode customer trust and hurt SEO rankings. Google penalizes frequently unavailable sites, making uptime a direct factor in your search visibility.
What to Monitor
Monitor your homepage, key landing pages, API endpoints, and checkout flow. Check for HTTP status codes, response times, and the presence of expected content. A page that returns 200 OK but shows an error message is still broken from the user's perspective.
Setting Up Alerts
Configure AlertPulse to check your URLs at your desired interval. When a check fails (non-200 status, timeout, or missing expected content), you'll get an immediate alert. When the site recovers, you'll get a restoration alert so you know how long the outage lasted.
Response Playbook
When you receive a downtime alert: check your server logs, verify DNS resolution, and test from multiple locations. Common causes include expired SSL certificates, server overload, and DNS misconfiguration. Keep a runbook of common fixes for faster resolution.
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