Soft 404
SEOAlso: Soft 404 Error · False 404
Quick definition
A soft 404 is a page that looks empty or broken to a visitor, showing something like 'no results found' or 'page not available', but still returns a 200 OK status code to search engines instead of a proper 404 Not Found. Google treats these as a technical error, not a genuine missing page.
How it varies across Australia
Soft 404 flags are common on Australian ecommerce sites with discontinued products and thin filtered category pages, and on real estate portals where listings expire but the URL stays live. The count itself matters less than whether it's climbing month over month in Search Console.
See technical SEO health across Australian industries →What it actually means
Imagine knocking on a door and someone shouts through it that nobody's home, but the door still swings open, the lights are on, and you can walk right in. That's a soft 404. The server tells search engines everything is fine (a 200 OK status) while the actual content tells the visitor the opposite. It's an empty search results page, a discontinued product page with a generic 'sorry' message, or a category page with nothing left in stock.
The reason it matters comes down to crawl budget and indexation. Google spends a limited amount of attention crawling any given site. Soft 404s waste that attention on pages with nothing to offer, and they get indexed anyway because the status code says they're valid. That dilutes the average quality signal across the whole site, which is part of what technical SEO is meant to protect.
A hard 404 tells Google clearly: this page is gone, stop indexing it, move on. A soft 404 tells Google nothing useful at all, which is worse than telling it the truth.
A soft 404 is a page lying to Google's face. Eventually Google stops believing anything else on the site too.
How it shows up
Soft 404s show up as their own category inside the Search Console coverage report, sitting apart from genuine 404 errors. They also show up indirectly as thin, low-value pages appearing in your indexation count that shouldn't be there, and as crawl stats reports showing time spent on URLs that return no real content. If organic traffic to a section is falling and the page count in that section looks bloated, check for soft 404s before assuming it's a rankings problem.
The Australian context
Real estate and marketplace sites in the Australian market see this constantly because listings expire on a schedule but the URL structure often stays permanent. Ecommerce sites with seasonal or discontinued stock run into the same pattern. In both cases the instinct is to leave the page live in case the item comes back, which is reasonable for the business but invisible to Google unless the status code is handled deliberately.
Where people get this wrong
Soft 404 vs 404 Error
| Soft 404 | 404 Error | |
|---|---|---|
| Status code returned | 200 OK | 404 Not Found |
| What Google does | Still crawls and may index it | Drops it from the index |
| Visible cause | Empty or 'not found' message on a live page | Server-level missing page response |
| Fix | Correct the status code or redirect properly | Usually intentional, no fix needed |
Related terms
Common questions
How do I find soft 404s on my site?
Open Google Search Console and go to the coverage or pages report. Soft 404s are listed as their own category separate from genuine 404 errors. Click through to see the exact URLs Google has flagged.
Do soft 404s hurt my rankings directly?
Not as a direct penalty, but they waste crawl budget and can get indexed as thin content, which drags down the average quality signal Google associates with your site. The harm is indirect but real over time.
Should I redirect a soft 404 page or return a real 404?
Redirect only if there's a genuinely relevant replacement page. Otherwise return a proper 404 or 410 status. A redirect to an unrelated page often gets treated as a soft 404 anyway.
Can a soft 404 be intentional?
Sometimes, for pages you want to keep live for users while telling search engines not to bother indexing them. In that case the correct fix is a noindex tag, not leaving the status code ambiguous.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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