Technical SEO

Server Status Codes

HTTP server status codes are standardized three-digit response codes that web servers return to indicate the result of a browser's request, governed by the RFC 9110 specification. They are grouped into five classes: 1xx (informational), 2xx (success), 3xx (redirection), 4xx (client error), and 5xx (server error).

Server status codes are audited during site crawls using Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Ahrefs Site Audit, and SEMrush Site Audit. Google Search Console's Coverage report categorizes indexing issues by status code type. Log file analysis reveals which status codes Googlebot actually receives versus what users see.

Authority Links

Google Search Docs

How HTTP status code classes affect Googlebot crawling, indexing, and coverage reports.

Moz Technical SEO Basics

Understanding all server status code categories and their SEO implications.

Related Terms

Technical SEO

Code 200

A status code indicating that the server has responded successfully.

Technical SEO

Code 301

A status code indicating that a web page has been permanently redirected.

Technical SEO

Code 404

A status code indicating that the web page is not on the relevant server.

Technical SEO

Soft 404

Refers to situations when the website server sends a 200 OK status for a page, but Google thinks the page should return a 404 code.

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