Soft 404 errors are a serious concern for SEO. A soft 404 occurs when a web server returns a standard 200 OK status code for a page that does not actually exist or contains error content. This is extremely problematic as it misleads Google’s crawlers, causing them to treat non-existent or error pages as valid content.
- Google-404-error- Why Soft 404s Are Bad for SEO
Soft 404 errors have two significant negative impacts on SEO:
1. Crawl budget limitation
- It is not Google, but most search engines have a certain amount of resources allocated for crawling web pages.
- During the crawling process, if a web page returns a 200 OK status but is actually an error page (soft 404), the search engine will repeatedly crawl that page, wasting resources.
- Instead of focusing on genuinely helpful and index-worthy pages, the search engine wastes time and resources on error pages, reducing the efficiency of the crawling process.
2. Visibility in Google Search
- Google will filter out soft 404 error pages and not index them.
- These pages will not have the opportunity to appear in search results, meaning they won’t provide any value (ROI) to the website owner.
- Since these pages are considered to have no useful content, they do not contribute to the website’s SEO performance.
In summary, when an error page returns an HTTP 200 OK status code instead of the correct 404 code, it reduces the efficiency of search engine crawling and lowers the website’s visibility in search results negatively affecting its SEO.
