To fix 404 errors in Google Search Console, first decide which ones are worth fixing: most aren’t. Google says “404 responses are not necessarily a problem, if the page has been removed without any replacement”. Fix the ones you link to yourself, list in your sitemap, or that used to get traffic, by redirecting each to the closest live page with a 301. Then select Validate fix in the Page indexing report and wait, usually up to about two weeks.
A list of 200 “Not found (404)” URLs looks alarming, and it’s the most common reason site owners think something is broken. Usually nothing is. This guide shows you how to sort the list in about half an hour, fix the few that matter, and stop worrying about the rest.
Where 404s show up in Search Console
Open Indexing, then Pages. Scroll to “Why pages aren’t indexed” and select Not found (404). You’ll get a list of URLs and the date Google last crawled each one.
While you’re there, look for Soft 404 too. It’s a different problem, covered further down, and it usually matters more.
A 404 in this report means Googlebot asked for a URL and your server said it doesn’t exist. Google explains what happens next in its guide to HTTP status codes: newly found 404 pages aren’t processed, Google crawls them less and less often, and a page that was previously indexed is removed from the index.
So a 404 isn’t a penalty. It’s Google tidying up.
Step 1: sort the list
Export the list (the export button is at the top right of the report) and give each URL one of four labels.
- You link to it. One of your own pages, menus or your sitemap points at the URL. These are broken links on your site, and they’re always worth fixing.
- It used to matter. An old page that had traffic, rankings or links from other sites. Check it in the Search Console Performance report with a page filter for the last 16 months.
- Junk. URLs you never created: spam sites linking to made-up addresses, old tracking parameters, mistyped links on other sites. Ignore them.
- Deleted on purpose, no replacement. A discontinued product or a closed event. A 404 is the correct answer. Ignore them.
To find which of your pages link to a 404, select the URL in the report and run Inspect URL. Its referring page, if Google knows one, shows under the page indexing details. A crawl of your own site with a free crawler such as Screaming Frog lists every broken internal link in one go, which is faster for more than a handful.
Label 2 takes the longest, and it’s the one worth getting right. An old service page with links from a local news site still passes value if you redirect it. Leave it as a 404 and you lose that.
Step 2: fix the ones that matter
There are three fixes. Pick by what the URL was.
| Situation | Fix | Status code |
|---|---|---|
| The page moved to a new URL | Redirect old URL to the new one | 301 |
| The page is gone but something close exists | Redirect to the closest related page | 301 |
| Your own page links to a wrong URL | Correct the link on your page | none needed |
| The page was in your sitemap by mistake | Remove it from the sitemap | none needed |
| Gone, nothing related, no links | Leave it | 404 or 410 |
A few rules for redirects:
- Redirect to a related page, not the homepage. Sending every dead URL to the homepage confuses visitors, and Google may treat it as a soft 404 anyway.
- Use 301 for permanent moves. Google treats a 301 as “a strong signal that the redirect target should be processed” and a 302 as a weak one. Both work, but a 301 says what you mean.
- One hop. Point the old URL straight at the final page, not at another redirect.
How you add a redirect depends on your platform. WordPress has redirect plugins (Redirection is a common free one), Shopify has URL redirects under Navigation, Squarespace has URL mappings in its developer settings, and most hosts let you add them to an .htaccess file or server config.
Soft 404s: the ones that do matter
A soft 404 is the opposite problem. The server says the page is fine (a 200 status), but Google thinks the content looks like an error page. Google reports these as Soft 404 in the Page indexing report and doesn’t index them.
The usual causes:
- Empty pages. A category with no products, a search results page with no results, or a location page with one line of text.
- “Not found” messages with a 200 status. Some themes show a friendly “page not found” message without sending a real 404 code.
- Redirects to irrelevant pages. Every deleted product redirected to the homepage often ends up flagged as a soft 404.
The fix depends on the cause. If the page should exist, give it real content. If it shouldn’t, make it return a proper 404 or 410, or redirect it to a page that’s genuinely related. A soft 404 on a page you want in Google is worth fixing straight away, because Google won’t index it as it stands.
Step 3: validate the fix
Once you’ve fixed every URL in an issue that you intend to fix, open the issue in the Page indexing report and select Validate fix. Here’s how it works, according to Google’s Page indexing report help:
- Google rechecks the URLs it knows about for that issue.
- Validation “typically takes up to about two weeks, but in some cases can take much longer”.
- The status moves through Started and Looking good to Passed or Failed.
- If one URL still has the problem, validation fails.
This is where people trip up: a validation for 404s will fail if the junk URLs you chose to ignore still return 404. That’s fine. Google says 404s for removed pages aren’t necessarily a problem. You only need validation to pass for issues you actually fixed. For a list of mostly junk 404s, you can skip validation entirely and let the URLs drop out on their own.
Google is also clear on one thing: don’t click Validate fix again until the current validation has passed or failed. Restarting it doesn’t make it faster.
Stop new 404s appearing
A few habits keep the list short:
- Redirect before you delete. When you remove or rename a page, add the redirect the same day.
- Plan redirects before a redesign. List every old URL and its new home before the new site goes live. Most big 404 spikes come from redesigns with no redirect map.
- Keep your sitemap clean. List only live pages you want indexed.
- Crawl your site every quarter. It catches broken internal links before Google does.
Our technical SEO checklist covers where 404s sit among the other indexing checks, and the site health section of the monthly SEO reporting template shows how to report them to a client without causing panic.
FAQ
Do 404 errors hurt SEO?
Not on their own. Google says 404s aren’t necessarily a problem if the page was removed without a replacement. They cost you when the dead page had links or traffic, or when your own pages link to it.
Should I redirect all 404 pages to the homepage?
No. Redirect each one to the closest related page, or leave it as a 404 if nothing related exists. Mass redirects to the homepage confuse visitors and are often treated as soft 404s.
How long does it take for 404 errors to go away in Search Console?
Validation usually takes up to about two weeks, according to Google, but can take longer. Unfixed junk 404s drop out on their own as Google crawls them less often.
What is the difference between a 404 and a soft 404?
A 404 is a real “not found” status from your server. A soft 404 is a page that returns a normal status but looks empty or like an error to Google, so it doesn’t get indexed.
Thirty minutes, once a month
Open the Page indexing report, sort the new 404s into fix and ignore, redirect the few that matter, and check for soft 404s on pages you care about. That’s all the 404 report needs.
