How to Troubleshoot 'Soft 404' Errors in Google Search Console

Learn how to troubleshoot the "Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404" notification in Google Search Console, and how you can prevent it from appearing in the first place.

These are pages that look like they are broken to Google, but aren’t properly showing a 404 Not Found response.

You should either convert these pages to proper 404 pages, redirect them to their new location, or populate them with some real content.

[CloudCaptain]

So I sat through 5 mins of this and still don't know how to fix the problem!

[adrianTNT]

You're like the Google help pages :))

[TrulyMajestic]

Good info but it would be much more helpful, if you'd do a screen capture and quickly fix a soft 404 in front of the camera. I'm still not sure what I'm doing from your explanation.

[AlpakaWhacker]

Any suggestions for Google Search Console picking up URLs as soft 404's when the URL is actually valid and not a 404?

[kochastudio]

I got this soft 404 for my custom 404 page (which had little content on the page). Can I just remove my custom 404 page from index to google to solve the soft-404 issue?

[donaldmann]

Im getting a 404 on my lg smart tv when i try to get on YouTube I check internet connection its ok. I try YouTube on my iPad it works fine???

[imagineisto]

Hello friend.

Please, can you help me? Look at my issue here: I have 9 pages with soft 404, through Search Console.

The thing is: that THIS is not a "problem". I'm gonna explain.

All of these pages are limited according to the user's access. Users with access (let's say) 1, cannot enter into the pages X and Y and then receive a specific message. And so it goes with Users access 2, 3 etc.

Well then. Whenever google passed his robots on these pages, he probably encountered this "error", which is a limitation that I decided to place on the site.

Does this negatively affect SEO? These are pages that I have no interest in exposing (including pages like /cart etc). They are not /home or /blog pages (which I want to be found anytime).

How to solve that? no-index would work here? Is this a problem btw?

[ittytwit]

What you didn't mention in my case is its the cart and checkout page that to the search engines they see as empty. But I assume I do'nt want those indexable in the first place.

[TryLife-qnxi]

Hi...Make a video on Submitted URL not found (404)

[SuzanneWright]

I am getting a Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404 on my custom 404 page, what?

[victorsalvans]

How can I fix a soft 404 when is not excatcly... I guess. In my case is a product list page with filters. Some filter combination has no results, and show a message seing no items found but it shows other stuff related and it's no a page not found. Should I return a 404 code even thoug it's no the custom 404 site page?

[FanisoZimunya]

Hi. I recently got a message that 4 of our pages have soft 404 errors. However, all 4 of these pages exist on the website, and they load fine. Only one of the pages has a redirect and it works fine as well. Could there be any other reason why there is a soft 404 error for these pages?

[ohmygod]

Still not able to understand what to do?

[yunindra]

I know you desperately want to have as many videos as possible uploaded to youtube, but at least please try to make them with some quality and show exactly the "how to fix" as mentioned in your title.

[rehman]

Not useful too much talk but no answers?

[walidin]

LETS UNSCRIBE THIS CHANNEL...! took a long time to say nothing. Not very helpful

[cynthiatzitzis]

I think that we should start reporting this kind of useless videos. He wants to have content and we are utterly wasting our time. Unless he really doesn’t know how to fix it and he is reading Google instructions. Either way thumbs down.

[flewggle]

Useless. If I had an IT team I wouldnt have come to youtube in the first place.