What status code should I set when updating and reloading the website for search engines to understand?

Currently, I use the code 503, but Google registers it as a site error!

CodePudding user response：

503 is the most appropriate HTTP response code for the scenario you describe. There are no 4xx or 3xx errors that indicate "try again later".

But lets step back:

1. It shouldn't be a problem if Google occasionally fails to crawl your website. If your business model is significantly impacted by this, I would suggest that there is something a bit wrong with your model. (And besides, that is a matter for discussion between you and Google!)

   It would be more a problem if your website's (real) users see 503's.

2. There is an obvious solution for you. Reimplement your mechanisms for reloading your website so that you don't need to send a 5xx response while reloading.

   For example, implement a pair of sites and flip between them using a load balancer or similar. That way you can be updating one site while the other site is serving requests. When the new site is ready switch it into production in the loadbalancer.

   There are probably other ways to do this ... depending on how your site works.