What this check inspects
Shipwork reads the main text of a page and classifies it against a closed list of page types and site kinds, then reports what the page reads as. It flags a page with almost no visible text as likely empty, and it treats a page that returns 200 while reading like an error or empty page as a soft 404.
What a failure means
A soft 404 is an error here. It is thin content in the index, it wastes crawl budget, and on a store it usually means a filtered or empty collection is reachable and indexable.
How to fix it
- Return a real 404 status when a product or collection no longer exists.
- Keep empty result pages out of the index with noindex, or block the URL pattern that generates them.
- Make sure an empty-cart or empty-search page is not reachable as a standalone indexable URL.
- Do not rely on a friendly message to signal emptiness. The status code is what crawlers act on.
A typical failure, worked through
The setupA store allows filtering and serves an empty collection page with a No products found message and a 200 status when a filter combination matches nothing.
What the check reportsThe check classifies the page as an error or empty page and reports the soft 404, even though the response status is 200.
The pointCrawlers follow every filter link. Each empty combination is a thin page that can be indexed unless the pattern is blocked or noindexed.