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5xx Series
Safe to retry
500 Internal Server Error
A generic error message, given when an unexpected condition was encountered and no more specific message is suitable.
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SEO Impact
Highly negative. Google drops indexing frequency for domains that frequently return 500s. Sign of critical website instability.
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Common Causes
- 1Unhandled code exceptions
- 2Broken database queries
- 3Missing environment variables
Code Examples
Node.js
catch (err) { res.status(500).json({ error: 'Server crash!' }); }