500 internal server error – common?

I’ve been using wordpress for the past few days with no problem. All of a sudden, whenever I try to access my site, I’m getting a 500 internal server error. I can’t access either the actual site or the admin section. Any ideas what is causing this?

I’m using godaddy hosting.

EDIT: it just fixed itself. Is this common for sites to report 500 internal server errors? It happened for about 10 minutes.