What is Soft 404?

A soft 404 is a page that tells users it has no content, such as a Not Found or empty-results message, while the server returns a 200 success status. The mismatch confuses engines about whether the page genuinely exists.

How it works

Soft 404s usually come from misconfiguration: a CMS that serves a friendly error page with a 200, empty search or category pages that return success, or thin pages an engine judges to have no real content despite a 200.

Engines detect many of these heuristically and report them in Search Console, but the reliable fix is to return a true 404 or 410 for genuinely missing content and to add real content or noindex to legitimately empty pages.

Soft 404 vs hard 404

A hard 404 correctly returns the not-found status code, so crawlers know to drop the URL. A soft 404 looks empty to users but reports success, so crawlers keep treating it as a live page and waste effort revisiting it. The content can look identical; the status code is the whole difference.

Why it matters for B2B

Soft 404s pollute an AI engine's model of your site with pages that claim to exist but say nothing, which is the structural cousin of thin content. If empty filtered views or stale pages return 200s, they add low-value noise to your crawled footprint. Returning honest status codes keeps the engine's picture of your citable pages clean.

Frequently asked questions

What is a soft 404?

A soft 404 is a page that tells users it has no content, a not-found or empty-results message, while the server still returns a 200 success status, confusing engines about whether the page exists.

What causes soft 404 errors?

Usually misconfiguration: a friendly error page served with a 200, empty search or category pages returning success, or thin pages an engine judges to have no real content despite a 200.

How do you fix a soft 404?

Return a true 404 or 410 status for genuinely missing content, and for legitimately empty pages either add real content or apply noindex so the status and the content agree.