What Is a Soft 404?

A soft 404 is a page that tells the server everything is fine — status code 200, no error — but delivers content that is essentially empty, meaningless, or nearly identical to an error page. The server says "here is a page," but the page has nothing useful on it.

The term comes from Google. It describes the mismatch between what the HTTP response says and what the page actually contains.

How a real 404 differs from a soft 404

A real 404 is technically correct. The page does not exist, the server says so with a 404 status code, and search engines know to stop expecting content at that URL.

A soft 404 is technically incorrect. The page does not have meaningful content, but the server returns a 200 OK response anyway. Search engines receive a signal that says "this is a valid page worth indexing" — but when they look at the content, they find nothing of value.

This is the core problem. A real 404 is handled cleanly. A soft 404 creates confusion.

What causes soft 404s?

Soft 404s appear in several common situations:

• A CMS returns a "no results" page with a 200 status. A search page, a filtered category page, or an archive page finds no matching content and displays a message like "No posts found" — but the server still returns 200.

• A deleted page redirects to a generic message instead of returning a proper error. The content is gone, but rather than returning a 404, the application shows a placeholder or empty template.

• A product or listing page has no items. An e-commerce category with no products, a job board with no open positions, or an events page with nothing upcoming — all thin or empty pages that return 200.

• Dynamic URLs generate empty pages. URL parameters that filter or query content can produce pages with no results for certain combinations, all returning 200.

• Doorway or auto-generated pages with near-duplicate content. Pages generated programmatically that contain very little unique content can be flagged as soft 404s by Google even if they technically have some text.

Soft 404s in WordPress

WordPress is particularly prone to soft 404s because of how it handles dynamic content and URL structures.

The most common source is the built-in search. WordPress search results pages at URLs like /search/somequery return 200 regardless of whether any results were found. A search with no results shows "Nothing found" — a soft 404 in Google's eyes.

Tag and category archive pages are another frequent cause. If a tag or category exists in the database but has no published posts assigned to it, WordPress still renders the archive page and returns 200. The page is effectively empty.

Date-based archives — monthly or yearly — can produce the same problem. A URL like /2019/03/ returns 200 even if no posts were published in that period.

Custom post types and plugin-generated URLs can introduce soft 404s too. A plugin that creates listing pages, portfolio entries, or product archives may not handle empty states correctly, returning 200 for URLs that contain no content.

Permalink structure changes are a related issue. When WordPress permalink settings are changed, previously valid URLs may stop resolving correctly. Depending on the setup, these broken URLs can return 200 with a generic page rather than a proper 404 — a soft 404 caused by a configuration change.

Why soft 404s are a problem for SEO

Search engines try to index useful content. When Google encounters a soft 404, it has to make a judgment call: is this page worth indexing? Usually the answer is no, but the process is less clean than a real 404.

Soft 404s waste crawl budget. Instead of spending crawl resources on real content, Google follows links to empty or thin pages and has to decide what to do with them. On large websites with many soft 404s, this can meaningfully reduce how much of the real content gets crawled.

Soft 404s can also dilute site quality signals. A large number of low-value pages being indexed — or considered for indexing — reflects poorly on the overall quality of the site.

How to fix soft 404s

The right fix depends on the cause.

• Empty search results pages: Configure your server or application to return a 404 status code when a search returns no results, while still displaying a helpful message to the visitor. The visitor experience does not need to change — only the status code.

• Empty archive or category pages: Either noindex these pages using a meta robots tag, or return a 404 if the archive is genuinely empty and unlikely to ever have content.

• Deleted content that shows a placeholder: Return a proper 404 or 410 instead of rendering an empty template with a 200 status.

• Dynamic URLs with no content: Add logic to check whether the requested combination of parameters produces any results, and return a 404 if it does not.

In WordPress, an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math can help by allowing you to noindex certain page types — empty archives, tag pages with few posts, search results — without changing the status code. For a more thorough fix, returning a proper 404 for genuinely empty pages is the cleaner solution.

How dislike404.com relates to soft 404s

A crawler like dislike404.com detects errors based on the HTTP status code returned by the server. A soft 404 returns a 200, so it will not appear in your scan results as an error — the server has explicitly said the page is fine.

Soft 404s are identified by Google based on content analysis, not status codes. Google Search Console is the right place to look for them: if Google has flagged any URLs on your site as soft 404s, they will appear in the Pages report under the "Not indexed" section.

The practical workflow is to use both tools together. dislike404.com surfaces real broken links and server errors. Google Search Console surfaces soft 404s and other indexing issues. Between the two, you get a complete picture of what is broken and what is being ignored by search engines.