A page that answers 200 but reads as an error

Updated 28 October 2026.

A page that tells people it is not there, and tells the crawler 200 OK, says two opposite things. Google believes the page: it lists the address in Search Console as a soft 404 and leaves it out of the index. This check finds the pages that read as an error page, by the heading they give themselves.

HTTP/2 200
<title>Storm Chukka — Boots — Trakis Demo Shop</title>
<h1>This product is no longer available</h1>

What Google says:

• A soft 404 is a page that returns a user-friendly “not found” message without a 404 status code. Google recommends a 404 for pages that are truly not found, or more information on a page that is not one (Page indexing report).
• When a page answers with success but its content suggests an error, an empty page or an error message, Search Console shows it as a soft 404 (HTTP status codes).
• Soft 404 pages keep being crawled and waste the crawl (crawl budget).
• In a single-page app, either redirect with JavaScript to an address the server answers with 404, or add a noindex robots meta tag to the error view with JavaScript (JavaScript SEO basics).

What to do, by what the page is:

• Gone, with nothing to replace it: answer 404 or 410. The page people see can stay friendly; only the status code changes.
• Replaced: a permanent server-side redirect to the replacement, the real one, not every old address to the home page.
• Still meant to exist: the template failed to fill it, or it says too little. Give it back what it is for.

Ours, as it is. The demo shop keeps one on purpose: the Storm Chukka, a boot taken off sale whose page stays at /shop/boots/storm-chukka, answers 200 and says “This product is no longer available”. The blog still links to it and the sitemap still lists it, as shops leave them. trakis.io has none: its own pages about 404 errors, such as the Soft 404 guide, are long, which is what tells them apart.

Check it yourself. Open the page with the browser’s developer tools on the Network tab, or run curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" with its address: a 200 on a page that says it is not found is this case. In Search Console, the page is under Why pages aren’t indexed, as Soft 404.

How the audit decides.

• The page answers 200 and does not ask to be left out of the index. A page with noindex is out of the index on purpose, and Search Console lists it under noindex instead.
• It has fewer than 250 words. A page about 404 errors has a heading that names one too; it is not short.
• Its H1, or its title without the site name, names an error: “404” at the start, “page not found”, “no longer available”, “does not exist”, “cannot be found”, “nothing found”, and the same in Romanian, German, French, Spanish and Italian.
• A template with many such pages is one finding, with the pages it covers. A site that answers 200 for every missing address is INDEX-008, one finding for the site.

Sources, read on 28 October 2026: Google Search Console Help, Page indexing report · Google, How HTTP status codes affect Google's crawlers · Google, Crawl budget management for large sites · Google Search Central, Understand the JavaScript SEO basics.

A shop or CMS that shows a "not found" or "no longer available" template with a 200, an error page served from a catch-all route, and single-page apps where every address answers 200 and a script draws the error.

In the Page indexing report, these statuses can come from what this check finds:

• “Soft 404”. Google shows a soft 404 when a page that answers 200 reads as an error. This check lists the pages whose heading names an error and that have little else on them. What this status means, and how to fix it.

• If the page is gone with nothing to replace it, make the server answer 404 or 410. The page people see can stay as helpful as it is.
• If a page replaces it, redirect to that page with a permanent server-side redirect.
• If the page should exist, give it back what it is for: the content, or the data the template failed to load.

Open the page and check the status code in the browser's developer tools (Network tab), or with curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" and the address: 200 on a page that says it is not found is the case.

Warning The page answers 200, but it reads as an error page: "Product no longer available". · /product/* · 38 pages

Products taken off sale keep their address and show a notice; a 404 or 410 for each, or a redirect to a true replacement, takes them off Google's list. (An example shop; the numbers are illustrative.)

INDEX-007 is a warning in the indexation category, and weighs moderately in that category’s score. When it appears on many pages built from the same template, the report shows it once, with the number of pages it covers — because one change in the template fixes all of them.

If the finding is deliberate on your site, it can be accepted as intentional in the report. It then leaves the list and the score, and comes back on its own if what it shows changes.

• meta robots noindex · INDEX-001
• X-Robots-Tag noindex header · INDEX-002
• Canonical missing · INDEX-003
• Canonical to another page · INDEX-004
• Relative canonical · INDEX-005
• The domain is a mirror of another domain · INDEX-006
• Missing pages answer 200 · INDEX-008

A free Trakis audit runs this check and the other 66 on your site, and tells you on how many pages each one sits. Or go back to all the rules.