How to check whether your DNS changes have gone live

Quick answer

To check whether a DNS change has gone live, look up the record with a public checker such as Google’s Admin Toolbox Dig or a global propagation map and compare the answer with your new value. If some locations still show the old value, wait out the TTL. If none show it, check where the change was made.

You have changed a record to point your domain at a new website, or set up email with a new provider, and now you are refreshing the browser every two minutes. Sometimes you see the new site, sometimes the old one, and your colleague in another office sees something different again. That is normal, and it is fixable with a few minutes of checking in the right order. This guide shows how to find out exactly where your change has reached, and what to do when it seems stuck.

Why DNS changes are not instant

When someone visits your domain, their device asks a DNS resolver, usually run by their broadband provider or a public service, where the domain lives. To save time, resolvers remember the answer for a period set by you, called the TTL or time to live. Until that period runs out, they keep handing out the old answer. MDN’s short explanation of TTL covers the idea.

So “propagation” is really thousands of separate memories expiring at different times. A record with a one-hour TTL usually settles within an hour or two. A record with a one-day TTL can take a day. Changing nameservers, which moves your whole DNS to a different provider, can take longer still, because the registry for your domain ending has its own caching on top.

Step 1: confirm what you actually changed

Before checking anything, write down three facts: the exact record (for example the A record for the bare domain, or the CNAME for www), the new value, and where you made the change. Many “stuck” changes turn out to be edits in the wrong account. If your domain uses nameservers at your web host, changes made at the registrar do nothing, and the reverse is also true.

To see which nameservers your domain uses, look up its NS records with any checker. Whatever company those nameservers belong to is where your DNS records must be edited. If you cannot get into that account, our guide to getting control of your domain back explains what to do.

Step 2: query the record directly

Use Google’s free Admin Toolbox Dig. Type your domain, choose the record type (A, CNAME, MX or TXT), and it shows the answer Google’s resolvers currently give, along with the TTL remaining. If that matches your new value, the change is live on the internet’s main public resolvers.

If you are comfortable with a command line, the same check works on your own computer with “nslookup” on Windows or “dig” on a Mac. Remember that your own computer and router have caches too, which is why your result can differ from everyone else’s.

Step 3: check from around the world

A propagation checker such as whatsmydns.net asks resolvers in many countries at once and shows each answer on a map. This tells you whether the change is spreading or not happening at all.

Step 4: clear the caches on your side

If the public checks show the new value but you still see the old site, the cache is yours. Try the site on your phone with Wi-Fi switched off, which uses your mobile network’s resolver instead of your router’s. Then clear your browser cache, restart the browser, and if needed restart the router. On Windows, the command “ipconfig /flushdns” clears the computer’s own DNS memory.

Step 5: check the things that depend on DNS

• The padlock. After pointing a domain at a new host, the security certificate is often issued only once the host can see the domain pointing at it. A “not secure” warning in the first hour can simply mean the certificate is still being created; our guide to a website showing not secure covers the longer-term causes.
• Both versions of the address. Check the bare domain and the www version. They are separate records and it is easy to update one and forget the other.
• Email. If you changed MX, SPF or DKIM records, send a test email to and from an outside address. Wrong email records do not break your website, but they quietly send your messages to spam, as our guide to business emails going to spam explains.

How to make the next change faster

If you know a change is coming, such as a website move, lower the TTL on the records involved to a few minutes a day or two before. Resolvers then forget the old answer quickly, and the switch takes minutes rather than hours. Once the move is settled, raise the TTL again. Cloudflare’s TTL reference explains the trade-off between speed of change and lookup efficiency.

Plan email records first in any move, because a mistake there costs you messages you never know you missed. Our guides to connecting a domain to your website and choosing and managing a domain cover the set-up side.

When to hand it over

DNS is simple until it is not, and the costly mistakes are deleting an email record during a website move or editing records at the wrong company. If you would rather someone else kept an eye on the site after a move, our website management and hosting is £20 a month with UK hosting, SSL, daily backups, security monitoring and up to three business mailboxes, and our guide to website migration costs explains what a managed move involves. Every Luxbranding price is on our pricing page.