Soft 404 Errors: What Are These and How to Fix Them?

If you open a webpage and find an error message hampering your search experience, what would be your reaction? As a user, you will probably be disappointed; close the tab and move on to the next link. 

However, for a website owner, this can mean losing out on lead opportunities. If misused, they can also affect the business and harm a website.

A common example of a ‘Page Not Found’ error misused is a soft 404 error, which can affect search engine rankings and brand credibility. Such pages can hurt SEO and website traffic, too. 

Therefore, fixing soft 404s is one of the key aspects of technical SEO. However, the reasons behind these errors are often unclear, making it challenging for SEO professionals to troubleshoot and fix them. 

This blog explains everything you need to know about soft 404 errors, including their meaning, causes, and ways to resolve them.

What Is a Soft 404 Error?

A standard 404 error means the requested page has been deleted or moved. So, when you try to open the URL, you get the 404 Not Found error rather than the page you want to visit. 

It also means that Googlebot already knows that the page doesn’t exist as it has got the same 404 error. Hence, it will not index that page.

However, a soft 404 issue is different as the server returns an HTTP status code 200 OK message rather than the correct HTTP 404 error code. It means that the page exits and is loading. 

In simple terms, although the page is invalid, Googlebot gets a 200 OK code instead of the correct error code, showing that the page is still valid. Hence, search engines continue to crawl and index it, showing it in search results.

This is because the 404 error message is not related to the HTTP server response, so the page shows its content stating it’s a 404 page but doesn’t show the same message to the crawlers. 

The page returning the 404 error code is not missing but may be empty or contain partial content from other website pages. It can be due to outdated links, misspellings in URLs, or server issues. 

Please note that soft 404 is not an official status but is created by Google to alert users. Hence, it continues to crawl that page until there is an action.