HTTP Status Codes and Soft 404s: How Google Interprets 404, 410, 5xx and 429
Google treats 404 and 410 the same and removes the URL from the index; 5xx and 429 slow crawling, and URLs drop if errors persist. A not-found page returning 200 is a soft 404. We cover error pages that keep the status code in ASP.NET Core, 503 with Retry-After, the rate limiter, HEAD and 405, a real 404 with RESPONSE_INIT in Angular SSR, and mertozen.com's switch from 404 to 503 on CMS errors.
8 Nov 2026
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11 min
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6
