Technical SEO
Soft 404
A page that returns a 200 status code but contains no useful content, like "product not found" text.
CurrentLast updated: 2026-09-16
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Definition
Technical SEOA soft 404 occurs when a page returns a 200 OK status code but displays no useful content — such as "product not found" or an empty category. Search engines may detect these and treat them as 404s. Soft 404s waste crawl budget and should return a proper 404 or 410 status.
Why it matters
Soft 404s waste crawl budget and can prevent genuinely useful pages from being crawled.
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