Soft 404

The status is in the Page indexing report, under Why pages aren’t indexed. Google’s help page says the page returns a user-friendly “not found” message without a 404 status code. Its page on HTTP status codes puts it more widely: when a page answers with success but its content suggests an error, an empty page or an error message, Search Console shows a soft 404.

Google recommends one of two things: return a 404 for pages that are truly not found, or add more information to the page so Google can tell it is not one. Which one depends on whether the page should exist.

• The page is not indexed. If it is a page you want in search, it is missing from it.
• It keeps being crawled. Google’s crawl budget guide says soft 404 pages continue to be crawled and waste the budget. A real 404 costs less: Google does not use the content of a 4xx answer, and 4xx answers other than 429 do not change how fast it crawls the site.
• A 404 is not a fault. Google’s help says a 404 is not necessarily a problem when the page was removed with nothing to replace it. A page that is gone and says so is the site working.

Open a few of the listed URLs in a browser, and look at what a visitor sees:

In URL Inspection, run Test live URL: it fetches the page in real time. Check the status code it got and open the rendered page. A page whose text is drawn by a script that failed, or that waits for something Google’s crawler is not given, can render empty for Google while it looks complete to you.

To see the status code yourself, curl -I https://example.com/the-page prints the first line of the answer: HTTP/2 200 on a page that says “not found” is the soft 404.

• A page that is gone, with nothing to replace it: make the server answer 404 or 410. Keep a helpful page for people if you like; the status code is what tells Google.
• A page that moved, or has a true replacement: a permanent server-side redirect to it. Google’s redirects guide describes this case: you removed a page and want to send users to a new one. A redirect to a page that is not its replacement, such as the home page for every old product, sends people somewhere they did not ask for.
• A real page with too little on it: give it the content it exists for, and check the template if many pages of one kind are listed together. The Trakis audit lists pages with very little text (CONTENT-001), the nearest thing to an empty page an audit can count.
• A single-page app, where every address answers 200 and the script decides what to show: Google’s JavaScript SEO basics give two ways. Redirect with JavaScript to an address that answers 404, or add <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> to the error page with JavaScript.

Then use Validate fix in the report for the pages you changed. A page leaves the list when Google crawls it again and finds the answer and the page agreeing.

Trakis has no soft 404 check of its own: it does not judge whether a page that answers 200 reads like an error. It does list the pages with very little text, above, and the pages that answer with an error code, with the code: on their own (CRAWL-002), behind your links (LINK-004) or in your sitemap (CRAWL-010). An error code is how a page that is gone should answer. Soft 404s also eat into crawling, which matters most on large sites: Discovered - currently not indexed.

404 or 410? Either. The help page names 404; Google’s status code page says it does not use the content of any 4xx answer.

Is it a penalty? No. Google is reporting that it read the page as an error and left it out of the index.

Will many soft 404s hurt the rest of my site? Google says they keep being crawled and waste crawl budget. That matters most on large sites, the ones its crawl budget guide is written for.

The page has content. Why is it listed? Google judged what it saw. Run the live test: if the content is there, add more of what makes the page what it is, as Google’s help suggests; if it is not, find what keeps it from Google.

The Trakis audit reads every page and reports what answers with an error, what has very little on it, and what your links and sitemap still send people to, each counted once with the pages it covers. Create a free account and add your site, or see every Search Console status, explained.