By Shad Super in Indexing —

Indexing Win #8: Not Found (404) in Coverage Reports (What to Check)

404s in Search Console aren’t always bad—until they break internal links or sitemaps. Here’s the decision tree.

404 “Not found” means Google tried to fetch a URL and the server returned 404.

When 404s are fine

  • The page was intentionally removed and has no replacement.
  • The URL is a junk/parameter variant that shouldn’t exist.

When 404s are a problem

  • The URL is linked internally from navigation or content.
  • The URL is still in your sitemap.
  • The URL should exist (broken routing, migrations, typos).

Fix checklist

  1. Remove 404 URLs from sitemaps.
  2. Fix internal links pointing to 404 destinations.
  3. Redirect only when there’s a true equivalent replacement (avoid “closest page” spam).
  4. Restore the page if it was removed accidentally.

Broken internal links waste crawl paths and weaken discovery. Cleaning them up improves crawl efficiency and user experience.

Linkbot helps you find and fix internal linking issues at scale so important pages keep getting discovered.