Soft 404 Handling

search What we check

Whether a non-existent URL returns a real 404 (or 410), rather than a soft 404 - a 200 response for a page that does not exist.

build How to fix

1. 1 Return HTTP 404 (or 410 for permanently gone) for URLs that do not exist.
2. 2 Avoid catch-all routes or rescues that answer missing pages with a 200 and a 'not found' page.
3. 3 A soft 404 keeps dead URLs in the index and wastes crawl budget.

menu_book Sources

• Bing Webmaster Guidelines open_in_new
• Google: Soft 404 errors open_in_new

link Related checks