Friday, December 12, 2008

Uptime Counts

Hollywood Reporter's website was down for 38 minutes on December 5th starting at about 2:06 PM (5:06 in New York). This was during primetime and I think during one of their prime seasons (awards season). They just laid off a dozen people.

If their site were accessible when I tried to reach it, they would've been able to serve ads to me. I wouldn't think twice before clicking a link to their site, or linking to their site; I worry their site may be inaccessible when I try to visit, so I may not bother. I worry their site may be down when my websites' visitors try to visit, so I may not link. I am not alone in my worry; search engines think this way too; they are also less likely to send visitors to a site that is inaccessible.

I like the Hollywood Reporter and hope they keep up the reporting they do for a long time; I'm a slightly frustrated fan. Best of luck to the recent former employees.

(An uptime tracking service I used found their site was up 99.13% of the time over the last 2 1/2 weeks. My site, a vastly different site than theirs in needs, traffic and budget, was up 99.95% of the time over the same period. Mine was down for about 12.5 minutes total; theirs was down for about 3.75 hours total.)

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