Smart Traffic SEO Tip #51 – GWT Crawl Errors reports soft 404s
Google Webmaster Tools has a tool which helps you discover undesirable “soft” 404s.
What is soft 404? A soft 404 occurs when a webserver responds a 200 OK HTTP response code for non-existing pages instead of the appropriate 404 Not Found. This non-existing page may display the homepage of the site or an error page.
Why is it important to fix soft 404s? It creates confusion for sites visitors and limits the site’s crawl coverage by search engine because these duplicate URLs may be crawled instead of pages with unique content.
How to correct soft 404s? Non-existing page should return 404 response code and displays a page explaining to users that the file wasn’t found. It is much better to customize the 404 page by including navigation links pointing to the site’s important pages especially the homepage.
Screenshot of the feature (Image from Googlewebmaster Central Blog) reporting soft 404s under Crawl Errors section in Webmaster Tool:
