500 500 Internal Server Error

When you'll see it

When the server hit an unexpected error and has nothing more specific to say: an unhandled exception, a broken deploy, bad configuration, or a failed database query.

What to check

• The server or application logs first, since the response itself rarely tells the cause.
• What changed last: a deploy, a config change or a dependency update. Roll back if the timing matches.
• That the error page really returns 500 and not 200.
• Long-lasting 500s make search engines crawl less, and pages can eventually drop out of the index.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

SEO impact

Temporary 500s are tolerated. Persistent 500s cause Google to reduce crawl rate and eventually drop pages from the index.

At a glance