A soft 404 is a URL that returns a success status code, usually 200, while the page itself says the content is missing or shows almost nothing useful. Google tries to detect these pages and reports them in Search Console as soft 404s. They waste crawl effort and are excluded from the index, so the fix is to return a real error code or add real content.
Common causes
Soft 404s usually come from templates that render something for any URL, even when the underlying record does not exist. JavaScript apps are prone to them because the server returns the same 200 shell for every path and only the client knows the item is missing.
- Not found messages served with a 200 status
- Empty search results or filter pages with no items
- Deleted products or posts that still render an empty template
- Mass redirects of removed pages to the homepage or an unrelated page
- Very thin pages Google judges to have no main content
How to fix them
If the content is gone, return a 404 or 410. If it moved, redirect to the closest equivalent. If the page is meant to exist, give it substantive content. In client-rendered apps, Google suggests either redirecting to a URL that returns 404 from the server or adding a noindex meta tag with JavaScript when the item is not found.
// In a client-rendered route, when the API says the item doesn't exist
const meta = document.createElement("meta");
meta.name = "robots";
meta.content = "noindex";
document.head.appendChild(meta);Checking the report
Search Console's Page indexing report lists URLs flagged as soft 404. Google's detection is not perfect, so check a sample: a real page with short content can be misclassified, which is a hint to make its main content clearer.
Example
Empty template pages for retired integrations
Slatebarrow, an analytics SaaS, retires several integrations. Their pages still render the template with an empty description and a 200 status. Search Console flags them as soft 404s. The team redirects each to a replacement integration where one exists and returns 410 for the rest.
Common mistakes
Redirecting all removed pages to the homepage
Google often treats this as a soft 404 anyway. Redirect only to genuinely equivalent pages.
Ignoring zero-result pages
Internal search and filter pages with no results should not return indexable 200 responses.
Questions
No. They are an indexing status. The page is excluded, and if there are many, crawl effort is wasted on them.
