What is a Soft 404?
A soft 404 is a page showing an error message but returning an HTTP 200 code instead of 404.
A soft 404 occurs when a page returns a 200 (OK) code but displays error-page content.
Problem
Google detects thin content and marks the page as soft 404 in Search Console, wasting crawl budget.
SEO Impact
Soft 404s dilute your site's quality in Google's index.
Related Terms
What is a Robots.txt File?
The robots.txt file tells search engines which pages of your site they can or cannot crawl.
What is a Meta Description?
The meta description is a short HTML summary that appears below the title in Google search results.
What is the Title Tag?
The title tag is the most important HTML element for SEO. It's the blue clickable title in Google.
What is a Canonical Tag?
The canonical tag tells Google which is the preferred version of a page when duplicate content exists.
What is Hreflang?
Hreflang is an HTML attribute that tells Google the language and region a page targets for multilingual sites.
What is X-Default Hreflang?
X-default is a special hreflang value that designates the default page for users whose language isn't specifically targeted.