Soft 404

A soft 404 is a page that returns an HTTP 200 OK status but shows content telling the user nothing was found, when it should instead return a real 404 or 410 status.

The mismatch is the whole problem. The server says the request succeeded by sending a 200 code, but the page itself displays a not-found message, an empty result, or near-empty content. Common causes are a custom error page that loads at the wrong URL with a 200, an out-of-stock product page that strips its content but stays live, an empty search or category page, or a thin page with almost nothing on it. Google detects the contradiction between the success status and the empty-looking content and labels the URL a soft 404 in the Page Indexing report.

Soft 404s waste crawl budget, because crawlers keep revisiting URLs they treat as live, and they clutter your index with pages that have no value to searchers. They also hide genuine problems: a broken template returning 200 instead of 404 can mask the fact that real content has disappeared.

The fix depends on intent. If the page should not exist, configure the server to return a true 404 (not found) or 410 (gone) status so crawlers drop it. If the URL changed, return a 301 redirect to the correct page. If the page should exist and have content, the real issue is thin or missing content, so add the substance that belongs there. Returning the honest status code for each case is what resolves a soft 404.

Related: HTTP status codes reference, Indexation check, Index bloat