What is a soft 404?

A soft 404 is a page that doesn't technically error but looks like an error page. The server returns 200 OK, yet the page says “product not found”, shows an empty category list or has almost no content. Google doesn't index these pages and reports them as Soft 404 in Search Console.

#Why it matters

Soft 404 pages aren't indexed, but Google keeps crawling them, which wastes crawl budget. Redirecting deleted pages to an unrelated page (usually the homepage) can also produce soft 404s, so the old URL's value doesn't pass to the new page.

#Where you see it in SEOAsist

SEOAsist's own crawl doesn't flag soft 404 as a separate issue; that decision belongs to Google. You can see Google's verdict on Monitors → Index status: the Verdict and Coverage columns show the status Google reports for each page inspected through the URL Inspection API. To catch likely soft 404s early, the Thin content (< 150 words) warning in Technical Audit is a good starting point. To connect Search Console: Connect Google Search Console.

#Example

GET /product/old-model-boiler
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

<h1>Product not found</h1>
<p>This product is no longer available.</p>

The right behavior: if a replacement model exists, 301-redirect to it; otherwise return 404 or 410.

#Common mistakes

• Serving “not found” pages with a 200 status code.
• Redirecting every deleted page to the homepage.
• Leaving out-of-stock product pages empty; keep them useful with similar products and information, or remove them.
• Leaving empty category and tag pages in the index; use noindex until they have content.