Soft 404: A page that tells the visitor it does not exist — or has almost nothing on it — while the server still answers 200 OK. Google reports these separately because the server and the page disagree.
Why Google flags them
A real 404 tells crawlers plainly that a page is gone. A soft 404 sends mixed signals: the status code says “fine”, the content says “nothing here”. Google looks at the content, and if it suggests an error, is empty or shows an error message, Search Console reports a soft 404 — listed in the Page indexing report among the reasons a page is not indexed.
Common causes on WordPress
- Empty archives. A tag or category page with no posts, or a search results page with no results, that still returns 200.
- Out-of-stock or discontinued products that show “this product is no longer available” and nothing else.
- Redirecting every missing page to the home page. A link to a deleted guide on fermenting kimchi that lands on a home page is not a replacement. John Mueller has said Google sees blanket redirects to the home page as soft 404s.
- Thin placeholder pages — an event page for a cancelled workshop with one line of text.
How to find and fix them
In Search Console, open Indexing → Pages and look for the reason “Soft 404”. For each URL, decide what it should be: if the page is truly gone, return a real 404 or 410; if it has moved or has a close replacement, use a 301 redirect; if it should exist, give it real content. Then make sure none of your own posts link to it — a link to a soft 404 is a broken link in everything but name.
Soft 404s are part of the broken-link checks in the internal link audit checklist.