Fix soft 404s — return a real 404 status code

30 min Impact: medium Effort: medium ✓ Scan-verified — no manual checkbox

A soft 404 happens when a nonexistent page returns a normal 200 OK status instead of a proper 404 — Google has to guess whether the page is real or broken, wastes crawl budget trying to index a page that shouldn't exist, and sometimes indexes a generic error page as if it were real content.

If a broken URL returns HTTP 200 instead of 404, Google treats it as a real, valid page — indexing it, then quietly losing confidence in your site's signals when it eventually notices there's no real content there.

How to fix it

1

Test a genuinely nonexistent URL

Visit a random, made-up path on your site and check the actual HTTP status code returned, not just what the page visually shows.
2

Fix the status code if it's returning 200

Your server or CMS should return a real 404 status for genuinely nonexistent pages — this is a server-config or CMS-routing fix, not a content fix.
3

Pair with a genuinely helpful 404 page

A correct 404 STATUS with helpful 404 CONTENT (see the Custom 404 Page check) gives both the right technical signal and the right user experience.

Common mistakes

This is invisible if you're only checking what the page LOOKS like — you specifically need to check the actual HTTP status code returned, which requires a dev tools network tab or a dedicated status checker, not just a visual glance.

How you'll know it's done

A genuinely nonexistent URL returns a real 404 (or 410) HTTP status code, not 200.

Tools that help

HTTP Status Checker ↗

Shows the actual status code returned for any URL.

H.I.V.E. checks this automatically

Fix it, then re-scan — the check confirms itself. No manual checkbox, the scan is the truth.

Run this check in H.I.V.E. →