web dev//SEO//soft 404

A soft 404 is a URL that does not exist and still answers with status 200 and real content, typically the home page. It is the default behaviour of a single-page site whose server returns the same document for any path: `/does-not-exist` shows the front page and tells the client that everything went well.

A soft 404 is a URL that does not exist and still answers with status 200 and real content, typically the home page. It is the default behaviour of a single-page site whose server returns the same document for any path: /does-not-exist shows the front page and tells the client that everything went well.

The harm depends on whether the host is indexable. Every mistyped or invented address becomes one more copy of the home page, a duplicate manufactured by the server that a search engine may index, and Google names the pattern and penalises it. On a host served with noindex, such as a pages.dev address, no engine is looking and the behaviour is harmless; it becomes a defect the day the site moves to its own indexable domain. The fix is for unknown paths to answer with a real 404 status.