At Search Central Live Asia Pacific 2025, Google’s Gary Illyes dropped an impactful piece of guidance: soft 404 pages still consume crawl budgets, even if they return a perfectly valid 200 OK status.
It is a clarification that has implications for SEOs, developers and large-scale website managers alike.
While we have known for a while that standard 404 pages which clearly tell the browser and crawler the page does not exist.
Even if they don’t use up the crawl budget, soft 404s fly under the radar and waste valuable crawl cycles on pages that are functionally useless to both bots and users.
What Are Soft 404s and How Are They Different?
To understand the issue, we need to separate true 404s from soft 404s.
A true 404 error is returned when a server receives a request for a page that no longer exists and responds with a 404 Not Found or 410 Gone HTTP status code.
These are clean and easy for search engines to interpret. Google sees it, understands the content is gone and avoids wasting further crawl effort on it.
A soft 404, however, is trickier.
These pages return a 200 OK status, which normally signals to search engines that a page is live and accessible.
But the actual content of the page tells a very different story, often showing messages like “page not found,” “this item is no longer available,” or “user does not exist.”
In other words, your server says “all good,” while your content says “this page is gone.”
That is a mixed message and Google uses content analysis techniques and machine learning to determine whether that mismatch qualifies as a soft 404.
Why Soft 404s Waste Crawl Budget
Here is where the real issue lies.
Even though Google’s systems can recognize soft 404s and decide not to index them, they still have to crawl and evaluate the page to make that determination.
That means these pages are still using crawl budget, the finite resource Google allocates to crawling your site.
And for large or enterprise-level websites, this adds up. If thousands of low-value or non-existent pages return a 200 OK, Googlebot may spend excessive time evaluating and re-crawling pages that don’t deserve attention.
Meanwhile, your most valuable and fresh content could be delayed from being discovered and indexed.
Illyes made it clear: soft 404s should not be overlooked, especially if you are managing a large or dynamic site where crawl efficiency directly impacts performance.
How to Identify Soft 404s in Google Search Console
Google offers a clear path to diagnosing this issue via Google Search Console. Under the Index Coverage report, there is a dedicated section for Soft 404s.
This is where Google lists URLs it has flagged because they appear to offer no meaningful content despite returning a successful status code.
Examples of commonly flagged soft 404 pages include:
- Product pages that say “currently unavailable” but still return a 200 status.
- Empty category or tag pages, often seen on e-commerce or blog websites.
- Expired job or event listings that no longer serve a purpose.
- Deleted user profile pages that simply show a generic “profile not found” message
These pages may still technically “work,” but to Google, they don’t provide useful content and should not be indexed.
Real-World Impacts: E-Commerce and Dynamic Sites
Consider a large e-commerce site with tens of thousands of SKUs. Products often go in and out of stock, categories become temporarily empty or items get discontinued.
If those pages continue to return a 200 OK but show “this product is no longer available,” they are likely to be flagged as soft 404s.
Now multiply that across hundreds or thousands of such instances, and you’re looking at a significant portion of your crawl budget being wasted on dead-end pages.
This creates a ripple effect: your new product launches might get indexed late.
Promotional content could miss its window of opportunity.
And users searching for your best content may not find it at all because crawlers are stuck evaluating stale or empty pages first.
How to Prevent and Fix Soft 404s
The solution to soft 404s lies in aligning server responses with content reality. If a page truly does not offer value, your server should reflect that through appropriate HTTP status codes or redirects.
Start by reviewing your soft 404 report in Search Console. Then, depending on the type of content, take one of the following actions:
If the content is gone for good, return a 404 or 410 status. This tells search engines clearly that the page is no longer available.
If the content has been permanently moved, implement a 301 redirect to the most relevant alternative.
This preserves authority and improves user experience.
If the content is only temporarily unavailable such as out-of-stock products then use structured data to indicate status, while keeping the page content valuable (e.g., “Notify me when available,” alternative recommendations, etc.).
Avoid blank pages, unfiltered search result pages or empty sections that don’t help either users or bots.
These should be either populated with fallback content or removed altogether.
At last create meaningful and user-friendly 404 pages.
Even when content is gone, you can keep users on your site by offering links, search functionality or helpful guidance.
Why This Clarification from Google Matters Now
The clarification from Gary Illyes, brought to wider attention through Kenichi Suzuki’s LinkedIn post, is necessary.
As Google’s indexing pipeline becomes increasingly AI-driven, crawl budget management becomes even more strategic.
In the past, technical SEO focused heavily on broken links, duplicate content and sitemap hygiene.
Now, we must also think about content-quality alignment and server response integrity.
Search engines are no longer just “reading” the page but they are interpreting it and any signals that contradict each other slow down the system.
What This Means for SEO Professionals
Soft 404s may not crash your rankings overnight but they represent a quiet inefficiency that can have serious cumulative effects.
In a search environment where Google prioritizes speed, freshness and relevance — you can not afford to let the crawl budget slip through the cracks.
The takeaway is simple but important: if a page no longer serves a purpose, your server should not pretend it does.
For site owners and SEO teams looking to maximize visibility, correcting soft 404s is now more than just a cleanup task but a performance optimization.
And as Gary Illyes reminded us, even if it says “200 OK” on paper, Google is smart enough to know better. Are you?
Zulekha
AuthorZulekha is an emerging leader in the content marketing industry from India. She began her career in 2019 as a freelancer and, with over five years of experience, has made a significant impact in content writing. Recognized for her innovative approaches, deep knowledge of SEO, and exceptional storytelling skills, she continues to set new standards in the field. Her keen interest in news and current events, which started during an internship with The New Indian Express, further enriches her content. As an author and continuous learner, she has transformed numerous websites and digital marketing companies with customized content writing and marketing strategies.