Numeric server responses that tell clients and crawlers the outcome of a request.
ID
SS-DF-028
Confidence
High · 90
Evidence
Strong
Updated
2026-07-08
Definition
Numeric server responses that tell clients and crawlers the outcome of a request.
HTTP status codes are three-digit responses grouped into classes: 2xx success, 3xx redirection, 4xx client errors and 5xx server errors. Search engines use them to decide how to treat a URL, for example indexing 200 pages, following 301 redirects, dropping persistent 404s and retrying 5xx errors. Serving the correct code for each situation is fundamental technical hygiene, because misleading codes such as returning 200 for a missing page confuse crawlers and cause index bloat.