By Shad Super in Indexing —

Indexing Win #7: Soft 404 (How to Diagnose and Fix It)

Soft 404s aren’t always errors—but they often signal thin pages or broken templates. Here’s the fix path.

A soft 404 is when a page returns 200 OK, but Google believes the content is effectively “not found” (or not useful enough) to index.

Common causes

  • Thin or placeholder content (empty category pages, no products/posts).
  • “No results” pages that look like errors.
  • Broken templates that hide main content.

Fix checklist

  1. Improve the page: add real content, helpful navigation, and clear purpose.
  2. Return the right status: if it truly doesn’t exist, use 404/410.
  3. Reduce duplicates and consolidate low-value pages.
  4. Add internal links from relevant pages once the content is worth indexing.

After you fix quality, internal links help Google understand the page’s role in the site structure.

Ship fixes faster

Linkbot helps you deploy internal links at scale so upgraded pages get discovered and indexed faster.