The site will be down for a couple of days - what to show to search engines?

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PlatinumArcade2011-09-18 16:03:55

Search Engine Optimization

PlatinumArcade, 2011-09-18 16:03:55

Due to an accident in the DC, the site will be unavailable for several days, and there are several tens of thousands of pages in the search engine index.
What to issue to search engines at this time? What mistake? 403, 404? It is necessary that the pages do not fall out of the index.

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4 answer(s)

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giggigi, 2011-09-18
@gigigi

503 Service Unavailable.
The server is temporarily unable to process requests for technical reasons (maintenance, overload, etc.). In the Retry-After header field, the server MAY specify a time after which the client is advised to retry the request.
This is about headers, and the page can be shown as something of your own, where users will be told when the site will be available again.

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homm, 2011-09-18
@homm

502

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Vlad Zhivotnev, 2011-09-18
@inkvizitor68sl

habrahabr.ru/company/google/blog/113024/ wrote especially for you =)

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temaHT, 2011-09-18
@temaHT

And the site, static? Dynamics?
I would move the site as a static + downtime warning to a standby hosting. Search engines would not break off about 503, and users were not nervous and knew that those works were going on.