Soft 404
A soft 404 is a page that tells visitors it doesn't exist, or shows little or nothing, while the server reports it as a normal working page with a 200 success code. Google says it leaves these pages out of search and lists them as Soft 404 in the Page indexing report in Search Console.
Source: Google Search Central, Troubleshoot Google Search crawling errors, checked October 29, 2026
What Soft 404 means for your business
Google's examples include a missing file on the server, a broken database connection, an empty results page from your own site search, and a script that didn't load.
The fix depends on what happened to the page. If it's gone with no replacement, Google says to return a real 404 or 410 code, and a friendly custom error page is fine. If it moved, send a 301 redirect to the new address. If it still exists and got flagged anyway, Google says it likely didn't load properly for Googlebot, and the URL Inspection tool shows what Google saw.
After any redesign, we'd look for one cause in particular: old addresses sent in bulk to the home page, which our 301 redirect entry covers. Sites built as single-page JavaScript apps have their own version of the problem, and Google's JavaScript guide gives two ways to send a proper error from them. If Search Console lists good pages as soft 404s and you can't see why, finding out what Google is being sent is something we can sort out with you.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, both answers matched Google's description and named home page redirects as a cause. Google's AI Overview cited Google's own docs and help forum beside SEO plugin blogs, Reddit, Wikipedia and YouTube. ChatGPT cited nothing.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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