1.2 Indexability & statusHighVerified
Soft 404
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.
What it is
A ‘not found’ message served with a 200 status.
Why it matters
Google may treat it as a soft 404, wasting crawl and risking indexing of empty pages.
How to fix it
Return a real 404/410, or make the page genuinely useful.
How to 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.
Cross-reference to ranking and citation factors
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.
Impact
Medium-high; crawl waste and index bloat. Direct.
Evidence
Google detects and demotes soft 404s. Google Search Central, How HTTP status codes affect Google Search