Soft 404
A soft 404 is a web page that displays a "not found" or empty message to users but returns an HTTP 200 (OK) status code instead of the correct 404 status code, misleading search engines about the page's existence.
Soft 404s are one of the most common technical SEO issues in dynamic web applications. They occur when: a database query returns no results but the page template still renders with a 200 status, empty category pages with no products show a shell, or search results pages with zero results return 200.
Google tries to detect soft 404s algorithmically, but it is imperfect. When it detects one, it marks the page as "Soft 404" in Search Console and excludes it from the index. However, undiscovered soft 404s waste crawl budget as Google keeps recrawling them expecting real content.
In Next.js, use the `notFound()` function from `next/navigation` when data is missing. This renders your `not-found.tsx` page with a proper 404 status code. Indxel detects soft 404s by comparing page content against common "not found" patterns and checking for thin/empty content with 200 status codes.
Example
// Next.js — prevent soft 404s
import { notFound } from "next/navigation";
export default async function BlogPost({
params,
}: {
params: { slug: string };
}) {
const post = await getPost(params.slug);
// Return proper 404, not a soft 404
if (!post) notFound();
return <article><h1>{post.title}</h1></article>;
}Related terms
404 Error
A 404 error is an HTTP status code indicating that the server cannot find the requested URL. It signals to search engines that the page does not exist.
HTTP Status Codes
HTTP status codes are three-digit numbers returned by a web server in response to a client request, indicating whether the request was successful, redirected, resulted in an error, or failed on the server.
Crawl Budget
Crawl budget is the number of URLs Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given period, determined by crawl rate limit (server capacity) and crawl demand (page importance).
Thin Content
Thin content refers to web pages that provide little or no unique value to users — pages with minimal text, auto-generated content, or content that is substantially duplicated from other sources.
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