A page that shows a not-found or empty state to users but returns a success status code.
ID
SS-DF-050
Confidence
High · 87
Evidence
Established
Updated
2026-07-08
Definition
A page that shows a not-found or empty state to users but returns a success status code.
A soft 404 occurs when a URL that has no real content, such as a missing product or empty results page, returns a 200 success status instead of a proper 404 or 410. Search engines detect these mismatches and treat the pages as errors, but the wrong status code wastes crawl budget and can leave dead pages lingering in the index. The fix is to serve the correct 404 or 410 status for genuinely absent content, or restore or redirect the page if the content should exist.