A soft 404 is the worst of both worlds: the page tells users it has nothing, but returns a 200 so Google keeps crawling it. I want either a real 404 or 410, or a page with genuine content. A ‘not found’ message served with a 200 status.
Why does soft 404 matter for AI search?
Google may treat it as a soft 404, wasting crawl and risking indexing of empty pages.
How do you fix it?
Return a real 404/410, or make the page genuinely useful.
How do you find it on your site?
- Look in the Search Console Pages report for the Soft 404 group.
- Open the flagged URLs and check whether they actually show empty or not-found content.
- Confirm the HTTP status with curl -I, where it will wrongly report 200.
- Either return a proper 404 or 410, or give the page real content.
Which ranking and citation factors does it touch?
Soft 404s waste crawl budget on empty pages and can dilute quality signals across the site. Returning the correct status focuses crawling on real content.
What is the impact?
Medium-high; crawl waste and index bloat. Direct.
What is the evidence?
Google detects and demotes soft 404s. Google Search Central, How HTTP status codes affect Google Search
Frequently asked questions about soft 404
What does "Soft 404" mean?
A ‘not found’ message served with a 200 status.
How do you fix soft 404?
Return a real 404/410, or make the page genuinely useful.