My missing pages return 200 OK instead of 404

Updated 2026-10-16

Short answer: when an address that doesn't exist still answers "200 OK" (often showing your homepage or a friendly message), search engines can't tell real pages from missing ones. Google calls it a soft 404 and may treat the pages as low quality or index junk addresses.

How to check it yourself

  1. Visit a made-up address on your site, like /this-page-does-not-exist-123.
  2. Check the status code it returns: in your browser's developer tools (Network tab) or with curl -I https://yourdomain.com/this-page-does-not-exist-123.
  3. It should be 404 (or 410). If it's 200, your server or app is catching every address.
  4. Fix the catch-all route or the hosting setting so unknown addresses return a real 404, while still showing your friendly page.

What Preventionlabs shows

Every report requests an address that can't exist on your site and checks whether it wrongly answers 200 OK, as part of its page basics check, which also covers the favicon and homepage images loading, placeholder text, and links to development addresses.

Price

First report free, no card needed. Then A$50 a month, up to 10 domains.

Run your first report free