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You type in a URL, hit enter, and instead of the page you wanted, you get a blank screen with some version of “This site can’t be reached.” Chrome shows it one way, Firefox another, Edge slightly differently again, but the message is the same: your browser tried to connect and failed.
The frustrating part is that this error covers a lot of ground. Sometimes it’s your Wi-Fi. Sometimes it’s a typo in the address bar. Sometimes the site itself is down, and there’s nothing on your end to fix. This guide walks through the actual causes in the order you should check them, so you’re not randomly restarting your router and hoping for the best.
What the error actually means
“This site can’t be reached” is a generic browser message that fires whenever the connection process breaks down somewhere between your device and the website’s server. It’s not one specific problem. It’s a catch-all for a handful of different failures, and Chrome usually appends a more specific code underneath the headline, like DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN, ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED, or ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT. That secondary code is the actual clue, so check it before you start troubleshooting blind.
Here’s roughly what each common variant is telling you:
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAINmeans your browser couldn’t translate the domain name into an IP address. Either the domain doesn’t exist, or your DNS lookup failed.ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSEDmeans a server responded but actively rejected the connection, often because a service isn’t running on the expected port.ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUTmeans your request went out but nothing answered before the browser gave up.ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVEDis close cousin to the NXDOMAIN error and points to the same DNS resolution failure.ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTEDis the browser telling you it can’t reach the internet at all, which usually means your device lost its connection.
Step 1: Rule out the simple stuff first
Before touching any settings, check three things that cause more of these errors than people expect.
Look at the URL itself. A misspelled domain, a stray character, or an old bookmark pointing to a page that moved will trigger this exact error, and it has nothing to do with your network. It’s easy to skim past a typo when you’ve typed the same address a hundred times.
Try a different site. Open a new tab and load a site you know is reliable. If that loads fine, the problem is specific to the one site you’re trying to reach, not your connection. If nothing loads, the issue is almost certainly on your end, and you can skip ahead to the network troubleshooting section below.
Try another device on the same network. If your phone on Wi-Fi can reach the site but your laptop can’t, that narrows the problem down to the laptop, not the router or your ISP.
Step 2: Check if the site is actually down
This is the step most people skip, and it wastes the most time. If a website is down for everyone, no amount of flushing your DNS cache or clearing cookies is going to fix it, because the problem isn’t on your end at all.
The fastest way to check is to use a third-party uptime checker that pings the site from servers outside your own network. Our website down checker tests a domain from multiple locations and tells you within seconds whether it’s actually offline or just unreachable from where you’re sitting. If the checker shows the site is up everywhere else, the problem is local to your device or network, and you can move on to the rest of this guide with confidence.
If you want a broader confirmation, our Is It Down tool answers the exact question everyone asks in this situation: is it down for everyone, or just me? It’s worth thirty seconds before you start messing with router settings.
Step 3: Fix DNS-related failures
DNS problems are the single most common cause of “this site can’t be reached,” especially when the error mentions NXDOMAIN or name resolution.
Flush your local DNS cache. Your device stores DNS lookups temporarily, and a stale or corrupted entry can point you at the wrong server or nowhere at all.
On Windows, open Command Prompt and run:
ipconfig /flushdns
On macOS, open Terminal and run:
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
On most Linux distributions using systemd-resolved:
sudo systemd-resolve --flush-caches
Switch to a public DNS server. Your ISP’s default DNS server occasionally has outages or slow resolution that never gets communicated to customers. Switching to Google DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) or Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1) in your network adapter settings often resolves the issue immediately, and it’s a change you can make in under two minutes.
Restart your router and modem. This sounds like the classic “have you tried turning it off and on again” advice, but routers cache DNS records too, and a lot of connection issues clear up after a full power cycle. Unplug both devices, wait about 30 seconds, then plug the modem back in first and let it fully reconnect before powering the router.
Step 4: Check your network connection
If DNS wasn’t the culprit, look at the network layer itself.
Confirm you’re actually connected to Wi-Fi or Ethernet and not just showing a stale connection icon. Toggle Wi-Fi off and back on, or unplug and replug the Ethernet cable.
Check whether a VPN is interfering. VPNs route your traffic through a different server, and if that server is congested or misconfigured, sites can time out even though your regular connection is fine. Disable it temporarily and reload the page.
Look at your firewall and antivirus software. Overly aggressive security software sometimes blocks legitimate connections, especially after an update changed its default rules. Briefly disabling it (on a network you trust) will tell you quickly whether it’s the source of the block.
Step 5: Clear browser-specific issues
If other devices on your network can load the site but your browser can’t, the problem lives in the browser itself.
Clear your browser’s cache and cookies. Corrupted cached files for a specific domain can cause repeated connection failures even after the underlying issue is gone.
Disable browser extensions one at a time. Ad blockers, privacy extensions, and security add-ons are common offenders because they intercept requests before they leave the browser.
Try loading the site in an incognito or private window. This bypasses most extensions and cached data at once, which is a fast way to confirm whether the browser environment is the problem.
Check your proxy settings. If a proxy was configured at some point, either by you or by software you installed, and that proxy server is no longer reachable, every site will fail to load until you remove it.
Step 6: Check your hosts file
This one is less common but worth a look if nothing else has worked. Your device’s hosts file can override DNS resolution for specific domains, and if an entry was added by malware, an old development setup, or parental control software, it can silently block or redirect a site.
On Windows, the file lives at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. On macOS and Linux, it’s at /etc/hosts. Open it with a text editor (as administrator or with sudo) and look for any line referencing the domain you’re trying to reach. If you find one you didn’t add yourself, remove it and save the file.
When it’s a server-side problem
Sometimes you’ll go through every step above and the site is still unreachable, but your uptime checker confirms it’s genuinely down. At that point, the fix isn’t on your end at all. If you’re the one running the site, the underlying cause is usually one of a few things: the server ran out of resources, a misconfigured DNS record, an expired domain registration, or a hosting outage.
If the site loads but returns an error page instead of failing to connect entirely, you’re dealing with a different problem. A 502 Bad Gateway means an upstream server sent an invalid response, while a 504 Gateway Timeout means the upstream server never responded in time. Both are server-side issues, and neither one is something a visitor can fix from their end.
Preventing this from catching you off guard
If you manage a website, the real fix isn’t troubleshooting after a visitor complains; it’s knowing about downtime before your visitors do. Setting up automated monitoring means you get an alert the moment your site becomes unreachable instead of finding out from an angry email or a drop in traffic. Our guide on how to set up uptime alerts walks through the process from start to finish, including how often to check and what thresholds actually matter.
It means your browser tried to establish a connection to a website and the attempt failed somewhere along the way, whether that’s DNS resolution, the network path, or the server itself refusing or timing out on the connection.
It could be either. Roughly half the time it’s a local issue like DNS, network settings, or the browser. The other half, the site itself is down, misconfigured, or unreachable from your network specifically. Checking the site with an independent uptime tool is the fastest way to tell which one you’re dealing with.
This points to something specific to that one device, most likely a DNS cache issue, a browser extension, a firewall rule, or a hosts file entry. Since the site clearly works over your network on another device, you can rule out router and ISP problems entirely.
No. Flushing DNS only helps when the underlying problem is DNS resolution, which covers errors like NXDOMAIN or name-not-resolved. It won’t do anything for connection timeouts caused by a firewall, a dead server, or an expired domain.
Use an independent checker that tests the site from servers outside your own network. If it reports the site as reachable elsewhere, the problem is local to you. If it reports the site as down everywhere, there’s nothing to fix on your end; you’re just waiting for the site owner to resolve it.