`, `<h1>`, or body content containing: "not found", "no results", "sorry, that page", "page doesn't exist", "404", "does not exist". Flagged as SOFT-404. ### 2. Status 200 with "out of stock" / "no longer available" Product pages that went out of stock but kept the URL live instead of redirecting or 404-ing. Flagged as SOFT-404 if schema still says `@type: Product` but `offers.availability` is `OutOfStock` with no alternative. ### 3. Status 200 with <100 words of content Thin content below Google's "thin content" threshold. Flagged as THIN. ### 4. Status 200 with empty main element Main, article, or #content element exists but is empty or has only whitespace/boilerplate. Flagged as EMPTY. ### 5. Status 200 with boilerplate-only Page is all header + footer + sidebar, no unique body. Detected by comparing to the site's template (if crawled). Flagged as BOILERPLATE. ### 6. Status 200 with redirect-via-JS Server returns 200 but a JS `window.location.href = …` fires in `<head>`. Flagged as JS-REDIRECT (tool also tests the resulting URL). ### 7. Status 200 with meta-refresh Server returns 200 but `<meta http-equiv="refresh">` fires immediately. Same as above. ## Why this matters Google's crawler mostly handles these correctly *on its end* — it deindexes them. The problem for you is: 1. **Crawl budget** — Googlebot still wastes time fetching soft 404s. Large sites lose significant crawl capacity. 2. **Sitemap quality** — soft 404s in your sitemap signal to Google that your sitemap isn't trustworthy, which affects how aggressively the rest of your URLs get crawled. 3. **Internal linking** — pages still linking to soft-404 URLs waste internal PageRank. 4. **User trust** — users arriving from older search results hit empty pages, bounce, and cost you. ## How to use it 1. Go to [/tools/soft-404-detector/](/tools/soft-404-detector/) 2. Paste your sitemap URL (or site root — tool auto-discovers) 3. Tool crawls up to 100 URLs, rate-limited 4. Report groups findings by pattern 5. Export CSV for prioritization For product pages that went out of stock, the right move is: - **Short-term out-of-stock (weeks):** keep live, update schema availability, add a "notify me" signup - **Permanent discontinuation:** 301 redirect to the category or closest alternative - **SKU retirement where no alternative exists:** 410 (Gone) or 404, not soft-404 ## Related reading - [Broken Link + Decay Scanner](/tools/broken-link-decay-scanner/) — outbound link rot - [Sitewide Crawl Sampler](/tools/sitewide-crawl-sampler/) — broader crawl visibility - [404 Page Quality Audit](/tools/404-page-quality-audit/) — audit your actual 404 page ## Fact-check notes and sources - **Soft 404 definition (Google):** [Google Search Central — Soft 404 errors](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#soft-404-errors). - **Thin content (quality signal):** [Google Search Essentials — Spam policies (Thin content)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies). - **410 Gone vs 404 Not Found:** [RFC 7231 section 6.5.9](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231#section-6.5.9). - **Availability property (out of stock):** [schema.org/Offer](https://schema.org/Offer). _This post is informational, not SEO-consulting advice. Mentions of Google, Googlebot, and similar products are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied._ --- Canonical HTML: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-soft-404-detector/ RSS: https://jwatte.com/feed.xml JSON Feed: https://jwatte.com/feed.json Hero image: https://jwatte.com/images/blog-tool-soft-404-detector.webp

# Soft-404 Detector — the pages that return 200 but signal 'not found' A soft 404 is a URL that returns HTTP 200 but the body says 'page not found', 'no results', or is thin-to-empty. Google demotes and eventually deindexes them. They're invisible to naive crawlers. This tool crawls your sitemap and surfaces them. Author: J.A. Watte Published: April 22, 2026 Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-soft-404-detector/ --- _Part of the [AEO / GEO / AI-search audit tool stack](/blog/blog-new-aeo-audit-tools-2026/). See the pillar post for the full catalog of sibling audits and where this one fits in the lineup._ A soft 404 is the worst kind of technical-SEO bug: it's invisible to tools that only check status codes. The URL returns HTTP 200. The sitemap contains it. Everything looks clean. But when a human lands on the page, there's no content — just a "No results found" or "This product is no longer available" or a near-empty template. Google is very good at detecting these. Their quality models classify soft 404s and demote or deindex them silently. You don't get a notification. The URL just... stops ranking. [The Soft-404 Detector](/tools/soft-404-detector/) crawls your sitemap and flags every URL that looks like a soft 404 regardless of HTTP status. ## The seven soft-404 patterns ### 1. Status 200 with "not found" text Explicit ``, `<h1>`, or body content containing: "not found", "no results", "sorry, that page", "page doesn't exist", "404", "does not exist". Flagged as SOFT-404. ### 2. Status 200 with "out of stock" / "no longer available" Product pages that went out of stock but kept the URL live instead of redirecting or 404-ing. Flagged as SOFT-404 if schema still says `@type: Product` but `offers.availability` is `OutOfStock` with no alternative. ### 3. Status 200 with <100 words of content Thin content below Google's "thin content" threshold. Flagged as THIN. ### 4. Status 200 with empty main element Main, article, or #content element exists but is empty or has only whitespace/boilerplate. Flagged as EMPTY. ### 5. Status 200 with boilerplate-only Page is all header + footer + sidebar, no unique body. Detected by comparing to the site's template (if crawled). Flagged as BOILERPLATE. ### 6. Status 200 with redirect-via-JS Server returns 200 but a JS `window.location.href = …` fires in `<head>`. Flagged as JS-REDIRECT (tool also tests the resulting URL). ### 7. Status 200 with meta-refresh Server returns 200 but `<meta http-equiv="refresh">` fires immediately. Same as above. ## Why this matters Google's crawler mostly handles these correctly *on its end* — it deindexes them. The problem for you is: 1. **Crawl budget** — Googlebot still wastes time fetching soft 404s. Large sites lose significant crawl capacity. 2. **Sitemap quality** — soft 404s in your sitemap signal to Google that your sitemap isn't trustworthy, which affects how aggressively the rest of your URLs get crawled. 3. **Internal linking** — pages still linking to soft-404 URLs waste internal PageRank. 4. **User trust** — users arriving from older search results hit empty pages, bounce, and cost you. ## How to use it 1. Go to [/tools/soft-404-detector/](/tools/soft-404-detector/) 2. Paste your sitemap URL (or site root — tool auto-discovers) 3. Tool crawls up to 100 URLs, rate-limited 4. Report groups findings by pattern 5. Export CSV for prioritization For product pages that went out of stock, the right move is: - **Short-term out-of-stock (weeks):** keep live, update schema availability, add a "notify me" signup - **Permanent discontinuation:** 301 redirect to the category or closest alternative - **SKU retirement where no alternative exists:** 410 (Gone) or 404, not soft-404 ## Related reading - [Broken Link + Decay Scanner](/tools/broken-link-decay-scanner/) — outbound link rot - [Sitewide Crawl Sampler](/tools/sitewide-crawl-sampler/) — broader crawl visibility - [404 Page Quality Audit](/tools/404-page-quality-audit/) — audit your actual 404 page ## Fact-check notes and sources - **Soft 404 definition (Google):** [Google Search Central — Soft 404 errors](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#soft-404-errors). - **Thin content (quality signal):** [Google Search Essentials — Spam policies (Thin content)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies). - **410 Gone vs 404 Not Found:** [RFC 7231 section 6.5.9](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231#section-6.5.9). - **Availability property (out of stock):** [schema.org/Offer](https://schema.org/Offer). _This post is informational, not SEO-consulting advice. Mentions of Google, Googlebot, and similar products are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied._ --- Canonical HTML: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-soft-404-detector/ RSS: https://jwatte.com/feed.xml JSON Feed: https://jwatte.com/feed.json Hero image: https://jwatte.com/images/blog-tool-soft-404-detector.webp