Are any of your pages "not found" while returning 200?
A soft 404 returns a success status but no usable content — an empty collection, a page that vanished without a redirect, a template that broke. Search engines treat it as missing, and you never see an error in your logs.
Samples key pages and looks for a success status with little or no usable content. Nothing is stored.
How this check works
Shipwork fetches a sample of your key pages and measures how much real text they contain, and whether they read like a “not found” page. A 200 status with almost no content is a soft 404: search engines may drop it, yet your server logs show nothing wrong.
Questions
- What is a soft 404?
- A page that returns HTTP 200 but has no usable content, so search engines treat it as missing. It is invisible in error logs.
- How do soft 404s happen?
- Common causes are empty collections, products or pages removed without a redirect, and templates that render a bare shell when content is missing.
- How do I fix one?
- Return a real 404 status for genuinely missing pages, or restore/redirect the content. Do not keep serving an empty 200.