Soft 404 errors: why missing pages must return 404

A soft 404 happens when a page that doesn’t exist shows a “not found” message (or your homepage) but the server still answers with status 200, meaning “OK”.

Why it matters

Search engines rely on the status code, not the words on the page. If missing URLs return 200, they can be indexed as thin, duplicate pages, and crawlers waste time on URLs that don’t matter.

Redirecting every missing page to the homepage is treated the same way by Google.

How to fix it

1. Visit a made-up URL on your site and check the status code in your browser’s developer tools (Network tab).
2. Configure your server, CMS or framework to return status 404 (or 410 for content removed permanently) for unknown URLs.
3. Keep a helpful 404 page with search and links to popular sections, but serve it with the 404 status.
4. Only redirect old URLs when there is a genuinely equivalent new page.