Soft 404s: non-existent pages not returning 404 code

  • Resolved deswalsh

    (@deswalsh)


    9 years, 12 months ago

    Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors check shows 62 as soft 404. These are non-existent pages on my site https://deswalsh.com .

    Message is:

    The target URL doesn’t exist, but your server is not returning a 404 (file not found) error. Learn more

    The listed pages all seem to be in a similar format: example
    https://deswalsh.com/search/page/113/

    Returns a page with this message:

    Search Results for: page/113
    Sorry, no content matched your criteria.

    But if I invent a page name, say deswalsh.com/jones – which does not exist – I get the 404 page not found page all in order.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Well, technically, a blog search which yields no results is not a 404 error. Same thing happens to me with a similar URL on my blog.

    Question is, why would Google have even indexed that?

    Been getting this Google webmaster error as well, soft 404s on empty search pages.

    Not much you can do about it – go to any WordPress URL and for example append

    /search/page/5/

    And you will get a Search not found – but Google wants a 404.

    I don’t think it’s a big deal.

    Thread Starter deswalsh

    (@deswalsh)

    Thanks Mark and Neil

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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