How do I check host availability in Search Console Crawl Stats?

Definition: Host status in Search Console's Crawl Stats report summarizes availability problems Google encounters while crawling a website. It covers fetching robots.txt, the file Google checks before crawling; domain name system (DNS) resolution, which translates hostnames into addresses; and server connectivity.

Key facts

• As of 17 October 2026, Google's Crawl Stats documentation distinguishes significant availability issues in the past 90 days from issues within the last week.
• Google's Property Settings documentation lists Crawl stats among the settings for the current property; available settings depend on the property and permissions.
• Google's network and DNS troubleshooting guide explains that network errors cause crawling to slow immediately and recommends checking firewall rules and DNS records.

Where is the host availability check?

Google's Crawl Stats documentation gives this report path:

Search Console > Property settings > Crawl stats

The report requires a root-level property: a Domain property, or a URL-prefix property at the root of a site, such as https://example.com. Within the report, Host status opens availability details. A red status calls for inspection of the individual categories.

For a property containing child domains, the Hosts list opens a report scoped to a particular child. Google lists only the top 20 child domains receiving traffic in the past 90 days.

What do the status and charts mean?

Google's host status guidance describes a clear status when there are no significant crawl availability issues in the past 90 days. Another status indicates an issue during that period but more than a week ago. A recent-issue status indicates a significant problem within the last week.

Clicking a category opens its chart. A dotted red line marks the issue threshold: Google's example is DNS resolution failing for more than 5% of requests on a given day. Status reflects how recently the last issue occurs, so an older warning can remain visible after a transient problem ends.

How do DNS and server connectivity failures differ?

The Crawl Stats documentation defines DNS resolution failures as cases where the DNS server fails to recognize the hostname or respond during crawling. Server connectivity covers an unresponsive server or an incomplete response for a URL. The robots.txt fetching chart separately shows the failure rate for requests to that file.

Google's troubleshooting guide recommends checking that DNS address records, called A records, point to the correct IP addresses and alias records, called CNAME records, point to the correct hostnames. It provides these commands:

dig +nocmd example.com a +noall +answer
dig +nocmd www.example.com cname +noall +answer

For network timeouts or connection resets, the same guide recommends inspecting firewall settings and logs, checking whether Google addresses are blocked, and contacting the hosting provider when the cause remains unresolved.

Which response details help investigate an alert?

Google's Crawl Stats response guidance defines DNS unresponsive as a DNS server failing to answer, and DNS error as another unspecified DNS failure. Page timeout means the page request times out. Page could not be reached covers retrieval failures where the request never reaches the server; those attempts leave no entry in server logs.

The Response table groups outcomes. Opening a response group shows example URLs, and opening an example shows request details. Server-error charts provide approximate incident timing, with further details available on opening them.

Related terms

• How do I inspect Google crawl failures in Search Console?
• Server log analysis
• HTTP status codes
• What happens when robots.txt returns a server error?

FAQ

Why can a warning remain after I fix the problem?

Google's status definitions include significant issues from the past 90 days. You can distinguish a recent incident from one occurring more than a week ago by its status.

Why can Crawl Stats show more attempts than my logs?

The same documentation counts potential crawls abandoned because robots.txt is unavailable. You can check robots.txt fetching status when this explains a gap between report totals and server logs.

Sources

1. Google Search Console Help, "Crawl Stats report", undated
2. Google Search Console Help, "Search Console Property Settings page", undated
3. Google, "Debug network and DNS errors for Google's crawlers", 18 December 2025

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