What a soft 404 is and how to find it
LightSEO · Technical SEO
What a soft 404 is and how to find it
The page opens and returns a 200 code, yet the search engine marks it as a "soft 404" and drops it from the index. This means one thing: it considers the page empty.
200
response code with a soft 404
1
report in Search Console
Causes
What causes it
An empty category. The section opens, but it has no products. For a search engine, this is a page without content.
A redirect to an irrelevant page. A deleted product leads to the homepage – the search engine sees the mismatch and treats it as a soft 404.
A page with a "nothing found" message. Site search that returns no results or a filter with no products.
Solutions
What to do
📦
Fill it or hide it
Fill an empty category with at least eight products or close it from indexing until it is filled.
🔀
The right redirect
To a similar product or the closest category, never to the homepage.
🚫
Close service pages
Internal search results and empty filters should stay out of the index.
Diagnostics
How to find it on your site
The indexing report in Search Console. Soft 404s are listed as a separate category – with the full list of URLs.
Check before fixing. Sometimes it is temporary: a product sold out, a category emptied. Then the fix lies in filling the catalog, and the technical side is fine.
Lots of soft 404s in the report?
We will go through the list and fix it: filling categories, redirects, closing empty pages from indexing.
