: What's the smallest page size for Googlebot to not go "Soft 404"? Google appears to have two documents for Soft 404: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181708?hl=en&ctx=tltp https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2

@Debbie626

There must not be a possible word limit for a particular page to identify it as soft 404. The ideal cases when such issues are reported by Google are:


When a dynamic template with no content (due to some incorrect parameters) returns 200. In such scenario, there can be thousands of pages which might not be important for anyone, but are getting indexed because of some incorrect query parameter handling.
When a real page is redirecting (generally 302) to a 404 page. In such case, rather redirecting to a 404 custom page, the page itself must either show 404 or 410. Its a general misconception to redirect to a 404 page.


Just ensure the pages that are reported are fine and have worthy content on it for a user.

Hope this helps!

Vote Up Vote Down

@Heady270

There appear to be several criteria that can qualify a page as a soft 404:


Redirect to the home page
The phrase "not found" or equivalent in a prominent place on the page
A blank or nearly blank page


I don't know exactly how much text you need on a page for it to be considered non-blank, but that is certainly not the usual reason that pages are soft 404. I tend to get them for redirecting to the home page. Many sites are configured to output the text "product not found" on a 200 page when a lookup in their catalog fails.

The page that you mentioned in the comment looks somewhat like an Apache error page: www.glenncrocker.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/apache-404.png (image source)

My guess is that it isn't just that your page isn't large, but also that it mentions the word "Apache".

Google's John Mueller says in the comments:


If Google is getting soft-404s wrong for your site, send me some sample URLs and I'll forward them to the team here. You shouldn't need to artificially tweak the response size.


The best way to contact him appears to be through Google+.

Vote Up Vote Down