TTL (Time To Live)
Sitecheck Team
A DNS record property indicating how long a resolver may cache that record.
TTL (Time To Live) is a value set on DNS records that tells caching resolvers how many seconds they should keep the record before querying authoritative servers again. Short TTLs allow faster propagation of changes, while long TTLs reduce lookup overhead.
Why it matters: Understanding TTL helps when planning DNS updates (e.g. migrating hosting) and can affect how quickly clients see new record values.
Quick tips:
- Use low TTLs (e.g. 300s) temporarily before making DNS changes, then raise them afterwards.
- Avoid extremely low values (like <30s) unless necessary, as they increase query volume.
- Remember TTL is not always strictly honoured by all resolvers.