Submitted URL Seems to Be a Soft 404: Meaning and Fix

A soft 404 error is a page that looks empty, missing, or “not found” to a user and to Google, while the server still answers with an HTTP 200 OK status where a real 404 or 410 belongs. Google catches the mismatch, labels the URL “Soft 404” in Search Console, and leaves it out of the index. The fix is almost always to make the response tell the truth: return 404 or 410 for gone pages, redirect when there is a real replacement, or make the page worth indexing if it deserves to exist.

Soft 404 Error

A soft 404 error is when a server returns a success status (typically 200 OK) for a page that is actually missing, empty, or shows a “not found” message, causing search engines to treat the URL as nonexistent despite the positive HTTP response.

What “Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404” means

“Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404” is the message Google Search Console showed in its old Index Coverage report for a URL that sits in your XML sitemap and that Google judged to be a soft 404. Each part of the message tells you something:

• Submitted means you listed the URL in a sitemap, so you told Google it is a page worth indexing.
• Seems to be means Google is guessing. A soft 404 is a label Google applies after reading the page. Your server never sends it.
• Soft 404 means the page answered 200 OK but looked like an error page, an empty page or a dead end.

Google has since renamed that report to Page indexing. The same problem now appears as the reason “Soft 404” in the table of why pages are not indexed. To see only the URLs from your sitemaps, switch the report’s filter to “All submitted pages.” The meaning has not changed: a page you asked Google to index looks to Google like a page that should not exist.

The fix depends on what the page is supposed to be:

Then press Validate fix in the Page indexing report. Google says validation can take about two weeks, and sometimes longer.

Why the status code mismatch matters

Search engines lean on HTTP status codes as a primary signal for what to crawl, index, and keep. A 200 OK is a promise: this URL has real content, index it. A soft 404 breaks that promise. The body says “Sorry, this page doesn’t exist,” but the header says everything is fine.

Google reads the page and notices the contradiction, which is exactly what the “Soft 404” label means. Detection is heuristic, though. Google can take a while to classify a URL, keeps recrawling URLs that answer 200, and can occasionally flag a real page that only looks empty, for example when its main content fails to render. Every one of those recrawls spends crawl budget you would rather spend on URLs that convert.

Soft 404s are easy to miss because they are invisible in a browser: the page loads, so nobody notices until Search Console reports a few thousand of them.

A 200 on a dead page is the SEO equivalent of a fire alarm that’s been disconnected. Everything looks fine right up until it isn’t.

Soft 404 vs. hard 404 vs. redirect

A hard 404 (or 410 Gone) is the correct “this is missing” response. A soft 404 is a broken version of that response. A redirect is what you use when there is somewhere better to send the visitor.

The trap is the “soft redirect”: sending every removed URL to the homepage or a broad hub. Google may treat a redirect to an irrelevant page as a soft 404, because the destination does not match what the user asked for. If a genuinely relevant replacement exists, redirect to that specific page. If none exists, let the URL die honestly with a 404 or 410. For the mechanics, see our notes on not-found 404 pages and avoiding a tangled redirect chain.

How soft 404s happen

Most soft 404s come from a handful of repeatable causes:

• CMS and framework defaults. Many themes, plugins, and single-page app routers render a generic “page not found” view for unknown URLs while keeping a 200 status. Google’s own advice for JavaScript apps is to redirect to a URL where the server returns a real 404, or to add a noindex robots tag with JavaScript on the error view. Our guide on JavaScript SEO covers how to surface correct status signals.
• Thin and empty pages. Category pages with zero products, expired listings, placeholder pages, or thin content returning 200 get reclassified as soft 404s even though they technically “exist.”
• Programmatic templates with missing data. A template that renders a page for every row in a database will happily render a page for a row with no data. The result is thousands of near-identical shells, all flagged at once.
• Faceted navigation and parameters. Sort, filter, and session-ID URLs spawn near-empty, near-duplicate pages at scale, and on a large site they flood the crawler with low-value 200s.
• Soft redirects to the homepage. Bulk-redirecting old URLs to / or a category hub, usually during a migration.
• Proxy, CDN, and cache layers. A reverse proxy or stale edge cache serving an old “not found” page with a 200, masking the origin’s correct response.
• Botched content removals. Workflows that strip the visible content but leave the URL live and answering 200.

Soft 404s on out-of-stock and seasonal pages

E-commerce is the worst offender. A discontinued product that returns an empty 200 page is a textbook soft 404. The right call depends on intent: if the product is gone forever, 301 to the closest live alternative, or return 404/410 if nothing comes close; if it is coming back, keep it 200 with clear “currently unavailable” messaging and related products so the page still earns its place. Never dump it on the homepage.

How to detect soft 404s

You need three lenses, because no single tool catches everything:

1. Google Search Console. The Page indexing report (under Indexing) lists URLs not indexed for the reason “Soft 404.” This is your ground truth for what Google itself has flagged. Start here, and use URL Inspection on a few examples to see what Google fetched.
2. Server logs. Filter for 200 responses on URL patterns you know should be gone (deleted products, old campaign pages). A 200 where you expected a 404 is a smoking gun.
3. A site crawler. Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs Site Audit will surface near-empty 200 pages, “not found” text on indexable URLs, and orphaned thin pages. Cross-reference against orphaned content, which often overlaps.

A fast manual spot-check: open the suspect URL, then check the response in your browser’s DevTools Network tab, or run curl. If the page says “not found” but the status is 200, that’s a soft 404.

# Print the real HTTP status code a URL returns
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" https://example.com/old-product-page
# A deleted page should print 404 or 410. If it prints 200, it's a soft 404

How to fix soft 404s

Match the response to reality. Each case has its own correct fix:

• Gone for good, no replacement → return 404 or 410 Gone. Google treats both as “remove this URL”; 410 is the slightly more explicit signal.
• There’s a real replacement → 301 redirect to that specific page. A redirect to the homepage only moves the problem.
• The page should exist but is thin → improve it. Add unique, useful content, or merge it into a stronger pillar page within the relevant topic cluster.
• Valid empty states (empty search, filters) → keep 200 but add noindex. See how to noindex URLs in WordPress for the practical implementation.
• Fix the layer that’s lying. If a CDN, proxy, or JavaScript router is suppressing the real header, fix the configuration so the origin status passes through to the crawler.
• Clean the sitemap. A sitemap should list only URLs that return 200 and deserve to be indexed. Take out every URL you just turned into a 404, 410 or redirect.

After fixing, use Validate fix in the Page indexing report to ask Google to recrawl the affected URLs. Then watch the log files and the report over the following weeks; soft 404 cleanup is rarely one-and-done at scale.

Soft 404s and AI Overviews

Google’s AI Overviews and other generative surfaces draw on the indexed corpus. A soft 404 never makes it in, so it can be neither cited nor summarized. The larger risk is the sprawl: Google describes its quality systems as working partly at the site level, so thousands of empty 200 pages can weigh on how the strong pages are judged. Clean status codes are table stakes for both classic ranking and AI visibility.

When soft 404s become a business problem

A handful of soft 404s on a small site is an afternoon’s work, and old URLs you meant to remove can sit in the report harmlessly. The table above covers it.

It costs money when soft 404s arrive in bulk. A migration redirects every retired URL to the homepage. A product or location template renders empty pages whenever the data is missing. A JavaScript router answers 200 for every URL anyone types. The sitemap fills with pages Google refuses, and the pages that earned clicks lose their history.

That is a website migration problem, solved by deciding URL by URL what each one becomes. On the Prawomat rebuild we cut 2,646 WordPress URLs to about 1,370 on per-page click data and rebuilt the pages that earned clicks, because a redirect to a hub reads as a soft 404. Daily Google clicks rose 2.9x in the 19 days after launch.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404” mean?

It means a URL you listed in your XML sitemap returned 200 OK but looked to Google like an error page, an empty page or an irrelevant redirect target, so Google did not index it. The wording comes from Search Console’s old Index Coverage report; the current Page indexing report lists the same problem as “Soft 404.” Fix it by returning a real 404 or 410 and removing the URL from the sitemap, by redirecting to a relevant replacement, or by making the page a real page.

What is a soft 404 error?

A soft 404 is a page that appears missing, empty, or shows a “not found” message but returns an HTTP 200 OK status where a proper 404 or 410 belongs. Search engines detect the mismatch between the empty content and the success code, treat the URL as nonexistent, and exclude it from the index.

How do I find soft 404 errors on my site?

Start with the Google Search Console Page indexing report, which lists URLs not indexed for the reason “Soft 404.” Cross-check with server logs (look for 200 responses on URLs that should be gone) and a crawler like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs. For any suspect URL, confirm the real status code in your browser’s DevTools Network tab or with curl.

Is a soft 404 bad for SEO?

Yes, in proportion to how many you have. A few are harmless. In bulk they waste crawl budget on dead URLs, fill your sitemap with pages Google refuses, and add low-value pages to the site Google judges as a whole. When they come from a bad migration, they also mean the old pages’ rankings went nowhere useful.

What’s the difference between a soft 404 and a hard 404?

A hard 404 (or 410 Gone) correctly returns a 404 or 410 status for missing content, telling search engines to drop the URL. A soft 404 returns a 200 OK for missing content, which misleads crawlers. Hard 404s are the correct way to mark gone pages; soft 404s are broken and need fixing.

Should I redirect a soft 404 to my homepage?

No. Google may treat a redirect to an irrelevant destination, usually the homepage, as a soft 404 too, because the page does not match what the user asked for. Redirect only to a genuinely relevant replacement page. If no relevant alternative exists, return 410 or 404 so the URL is removed cleanly.