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Soft 404 in Search Console: why Google treats your page as missing

The page returns 200 OK but looks like an error or empty page to Google. Send a real 404 or 410 if it is gone, a 301 if it moved, or fix what failed to load.

The message in Search Console

Soft 404

Page indexing report, group "Not indexed". Spelling as in Google's help page for the report.

By the Crawlerpeek editorial team · Sources checked · Updated · Editorial standards

What Google says

The page request returns what we think is a soft 404 response. This means that it returns a user-friendly "not found" message but not a 404 HTTP response code.

Source: Google Search Console Help: Page indexing report, read 2026-10-30.

Common causes

  • A "not found" or "no longer available" page that is sent with status 200 instead of 404 or 410.
  • Content that failed to load for Googlebot. Google names a missing server-side include, a broken database connection, an empty internal search results page and an unloaded or missing JavaScript file (troubleshooting crawling errors).
  • A client-side app that shows its error view for an unknown route while the server answers 200 for every path.
  • Pages with almost no content, such as empty listings.

How to check

  1. Run URL Inspection's live test and click "View tested page" for a screenshot of how Google rendered the page (URL Inspection tool).
  2. Enter the URL in see a page as a bot: it shows the HTTP status and how much text is in the HTML before JavaScript runs. Status 200 with an error message or almost no text is the soft 404 pattern.
  3. If the page needs scripts, check that none of its resources are blocked by robots.txt or fail to load.

When to fix it and when to leave it

Fix it by what the page is. If it is gone, return 404 or 410; if it moved, use a 301 redirect to the new address; if it still exists, make sure it loads properly for Googlebot (troubleshooting crawling errors). For client-side apps, Google offers two ways: a JavaScript redirect to a URL for which the server responds 404, or adding a robots noindex meta tag to error pages with JavaScript (JavaScript SEO basics). Leaving a real dead page as a soft 404 has a cost: Google says soft 404 pages will continue to be crawled and waste your crawl budget.

AI crawlers and AI search

A crawler that does not run JavaScript gets only the HTML your server sends. If the main content is added by scripts, that HTML can look like an empty page to it, whatever Google's renderer makes of it. See a page as a bot shows exactly that HTML; the checker adds which AI bots robots.txt lets in.

Questions

What is the difference between a soft 404 and a 404?

A 404 is a status code the server sends. A soft 404 is Google's label for a page that sends a success code while its content looks like an error or an empty page.

Should I redirect missing pages to the home page?

Not as a blanket rule. Google's advice is a 301 to the new location when the page moved, and a 404 or 410 when it is gone.

Can a page with real content be flagged as soft 404?

Yes, when it did not load properly for Googlebot, for example because critical resources were missing. Google suggests checking such pages with the URL Inspection tool.

Related messages

  • Crawled - currently not indexed · Google fetched the page but chose not to index it for now. No error is reported: check the page's text, duplicates and links, improve it, and give Google time.
  • Redirect error · Google could not follow the redirect: a chain too long, a loop, a URL too long or a bad URL in the chain. Redirect straight to the final page in one hop.
  • Discovered - currently not indexed · Google knows the URL but has not crawled it yet, typically because more crawling might overload your site. Check server errors, speed, links and sitemap.
  • Search Console Crawl and Indexing Errors

Sources

Google's documentation, each page read on 2026-10-30. Google updates these pages; if its wording has changed since, Google's page is the reference.

Check the URL: robots.txt per bot, HTTP status, noindex and the HTML a crawler gets.Run the checker