False Positives vs Real Downtime: How to Tell the Difference
Nothing erodes trust in monitoring faster than alerts that turn out to be “nothing”. At the same time, missing a real outage can cost money and reputation. The key is understanding the difference between false positives and real downtime.
1. What Is a False Positive?
A false positive happens when monitoring reports a failure, but the service is actually available to users.
Common causes include:
- Temporary network glitches
- Single-region connectivity issues
- Short response-time spikes
- Firewall or rate-limit blocking a monitor
2. What Is Real Downtime?
Real downtime means users cannot access your service as expected. This includes:
- Complete service outages
- API endpoints consistently failing
- SSL or DNS misconfigurations
- Infrastructure crashes
Real downtime usually persists across multiple checks and locations.
3. Why Single Checks Are Dangerous
Relying on a single monitoring location or one failed request is the fastest way to generate false alarms.
One dropped packet or routing issue should not wake your entire team.
4. Multi-Location Confirmation Matters
When multiple regions fail the same check, the probability of real downtime increases dramatically.
UptyBots uses global nodes to confirm failures before triggering alerts — reducing noise without hiding incidents.
5. The Role of Retry Logic
Intelligent retry logic helps distinguish momentary hiccups from persistent problems.
- Single failure → retry
- Repeated failures → alert
This simple approach prevents panic while still reacting fast.
6. Monitoring Context Beats Raw Status Codes
A 200 OK doesn’t always mean “healthy”. Response time, content validation, and consistency over time paint a much clearer picture.
7. How to Reduce False Positives Without Missing Outages
- Use multi-location monitoring
- Enable retries before alerting
- Monitor APIs and websites separately
- Set realistic timeout thresholds
UptyBots balances speed and accuracy, so alerts mean action — not confusion.
Start improving your uptime today: See our tutorials or choose a plan.