A soft 404 happens when a page looks and reads like an error page, empty, missing content, a "nothing found" message, but the server still responds with a 200 status code claiming success instead of the 404 the situation actually calls for. Google specifically detects this mismatch and treats it as its own category of problem, distinct from a genuine 404.
The mismatch causes real confusion: search engines see a 200 and may keep the URL indexed as if it were a real, functioning page, while any visitor who lands on it sees essentially nothing useful there. Common causes include a deleted product page that redirects to a generic category page instead of returning a real 404, a broken template that renders an empty page without erroring, or a custom "not found" page built without actually setting the correct status code in the server response. Fixing a soft 404 means making the status code match reality, either the page genuinely returns 404 or 410 if it should no longer exist, or it gets real content restored if it was broken by mistake, rather than quietly serving 200 over something that isn't actually there.
