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Have you ever tried visiting a website and have it refuse to load, yet find out later that your friends could get to it just fine?
That happens more often than you think, and it’s quite frustrating to say the least.
There are several reasons why your browser might not be able to load a given web page, some of which are completely out of your control. Here are some of the most common reasons why a page won’t load:
1 – Your computer’s security software is blocking access to the page (this actually happens a lot).
If this is the case, you can follow the instructions provided by the maker of your security software to “whitelist” the website that is being blocked- IF you trust the site and know it to be safe.
2 – If it has one, your device’s “Parental Control” or “Safe Browsing” app is blocking access to the site because it has mistakenly flagged it as being above the maturity threshold you have set. As with number 1 above, you should be able to change the settings in that app to allow the web page to be displayed.
3 – The browser cache contains a corrupted version of the page. Try clearing your browser’s cache and then see if the page will load normally.
Note: In most browsers you can clear the cache with the Ctrl+Shift+Delete key combination.
4 – There is a connectivity issue with your ISP (or the Internet at large) that’s unrelated to your local Internet connection.
This happens on occasion, most often as the result of a major Internet trunk line going down for some reason.
A fairly recent example was when a construction crew accidentally severed a major fiber optic trunk line in California causing several of the Internet’s busiest websites go offline for the better part of a day.
Note: In cases like this there will almost always be news reports posted about the large-scale outage. If suspect this to be the problem simply head over to Google News and type the words Internet outage into the search box. If there’s a major outage going on you’ll likely see multiple articles about it.
5 – The website is actually down and cannot be displayed by any browser on any computer at any location.
If either number 4 or number 5 is the problem, there is really nothing you can do except wait for the connectivity issue to be resolved or for the site to come back online.
You can always try to contact your ISP or webmaster to let them know there is a problem, but chances are the problem will already have been reported numerous times before you can even pick up the phone.
If being able to access a site that won’t load is important to you, you’ll have to do a bit of detective work to find out why it won’t load and then attempt to fix whatever is causing the problem. Unfortunately, the methods for doing so are beyond the scope of this post.
That being said, finding out if the site is truly down for everyone (and not just for you) is almost as easy as reciting your own name…
Simply visit Down For Everyone Or Just Me and type (or copy and paste) the URL of the page you cannot get to load into the search box.
You’ll find out right away whether the site is actually down or some local issue with your device is keeping it from loading.
If the site is truly down your only option is to wait until the issue is fixed and the site comes back up. Ditto if the site is up but a distant Internet issue is preventing the page(s) you want to view from reaching your browser.
If the site isn’t truly down you’ll need to find out why you can’t access it and take whatever steps are necessary to fix the issue if it’s being caused by a problem with your own computer or Internet connection.