Technical SEO
Soft 404
A soft 404 is a page that returns a 200 (OK) HTTP status code to search engines but actually contains a "not found" or error message, or has extremely thin/no content. Google recognizes these pages as low-quality and may treat them similarly to hard 404s in terms of indexing, but they waste crawl budget and can dilute site quality signals.
Soft 404 errors are flagged in Google Search Console's Coverage report under "Soft 404" and can be identified via Screaming Frog by comparing page content length and status codes. Fixes include implementing proper 404 or 410 HTTP status codes, redirecting to relevant content, or adding substantive content to these pages.
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Related Terms
Technical SEO
Code 404
A status code indicating that the web page is not on the relevant server.
Technical SEO
Code 410
A status code indicating that the web page is not on the relevant server, definitively and permanently.
Technical SEO
Server Status Codes
Refers to the three-digit responses that a server gives to a browser's request.
Content
Thin Content
Pages with insufficient unique value relative to user expectations — often very short, templated, auto-generated, scraped, or thinly differentiated from existing pages — and a primary target of Google's Helpful Content System.