Soft 404
A soft 404 is a page that says not found in words while returning a 200 status code.
Why it matters
Crawlers read the status, not the words, so the page gets indexed as thin content and competes with real pages.
How it is measured
Request a URL you know does not exist and confirm the status code is 404.
Checks that involve soft 404
Related terms
Questions
What is soft 404?
A soft 404 is a page that says not found in words while returning a 200 status code.
Why does soft 404 matter?
Crawlers read the status, not the words, so the page gets indexed as thin content and competes with real pages.
How is soft 404 measured?
Request a URL you know does not exist and confirm the status code is 404.