diff --git a/archivebox/util.py b/archivebox/util.py
index 2a81bda9..6ddb68ab 100644
--- a/archivebox/util.py
+++ b/archivebox/util.py
@@ -234,6 +234,7 @@ def fetch_page_title(url, default=True):
 
     try:
         sys.stdout.write('.')
+        sys.stdout.flush()
         html_content = urllib.request.urlopen(url, timeout=10).read().decode('utf-8')
         match = re.search('<title>(.*?)</title>', html_content)
         return match.group(1) if match else default or None