Glossary · Networking

Soft 404

A soft 404 is a page that tells visitors the content is missing but returns a 200 OK status, or that is so thin a search engine treats it as not found.

Updated October 21, 2026

A soft 404 is a URL that shows a "not found" message, an empty result or near-blank content while returning a success status such as 200. Search engines also use the term for pages they judge to be effectively missing, such as redirects of many dead URLs to an unrelated page.

Why it matters

Crawlers rely on status codes to decide whether a URL belongs in the index. A soft 404 wastes crawl budget, keeps junk pages indexed for longer and shows up in Google Search Console as a coverage issue. It also hides real breakage from uptime monitors that only look for 200.

Example

Test with a URL that cannot exist:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" https://example.com/zzz-no-such-page

If this prints 200, your site serves soft 404s. Fix the application or server so unknown routes return 404. A keyword check that looks for the text "Page not found" on a 200 response can catch regressions in the meantime.

Common mistakes

  • Single-page apps that render a "not found" view client-side but always send 200.
  • Redirecting every missing URL to the homepage or a search page.
  • Returning 200 for out-of-stock or empty-category pages that you actually want removed.

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