A soft 404 occurs when a server returns a 200 OK HTTP status code for a page that contains no meaningful content — typically because the requested resource does not exist, but the site has not been configured to return a proper 404 Not Found or 410 Gone response. Common examples include “product not found” pages, empty search results pages, and CMS pages where content has been removed but the URL template remains active. Google’s crawlers detect soft 404s by analysing page content and flagging pages that appear empty or unhelpful despite reporting success to the browser. They waste crawl budget and can dilute a site’s perceived quality. The fix is to return a genuine 404 or 410 status code for truly missing content.