How do I fix soft 404 error?
How to fix soft 404 errors
- Check that the page is indeed a soft 404 or a false alarm.
- Configure your server to return the proper not found error code (404/410)
- Improve the page and request indexing.
- Redirect the page using a 301 redirection.
- Keep the page on your site but de-index it from search engines.
What is Google soft 404?
A soft 404 is a URL that returns a page telling the user that the page does not exist and also a 200 (success) status code. In some cases, it might be a page with little or no content (for example, a sparsely populated or empty page). A success status code tells search engines that there’s a real page at that URL.
Are 404 pages indexed by Google?
Google Remembers 404 Pages. Although Google may not keep a web page in its index, if the page used to exist, Google will remember that a web page used to exist at that URL and will crawl that old URL to see if it returned. 404 means the page was not found.
How can I check for soft 404 errors on Google?
So it simply removes them from its index and gets on with crawling pages that actually exist. The easiest way to check for soft 404 errors is using Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).
What’s the difference between soft 404 and 404 Not Found?
The difference between 404 not found and soft 404 errors is that in the case of 404 not found errors the page is not found and the returned HTTP status code is a 404 or 410 (which correctly corresponds to not found ).
Where can I find a 404 Not Found error?
The most reliable way to find 404 errors (both 404 not found and soft 404 errors) is through Google search console and in particular the Coverage Report and the URL Inspection tool. If you haven’t done so already, the first step is to register your website with Google. This will give you access to a number of features to improve your SEO.
Why does Google Think a page is a 404?
When Google tries to crawl the page some of the page resources (CSS, JS) cannot be loaded and as a result, the page comes with no content and this makes Google think that it should be a 404. Google falsely marks a page as ‘seems to be a 404’ while there is nothing wrong with the page.