404 Page

A 404 page is what a server returns when no content exists at the requested URL. The status code 404 means "Not Found": the server answers correctly, but it has nothing to deliver at that address. It happens when a page has been deleted, when a URL changed without a redirect, or when a link misspells the address.

A handful of 404s does no damage to your SEO. Pages disappear from every website, and Google expects it. The damage starts when many internal links point at dead addresses: visitors hit a dead end, Googlebot spends crawl capacity on URLs with nothing behind them, and if a deleted page had valuable backlinks, the authority they carried evaporates. A 301 redirect is the mechanism that recovers it, since a retired address pointing to a relevant successor carries both users and most of the link value along with it.

The variant that slips past most audits is the soft 404: the server answers 200 ("OK") while the page shows an error message or stands empty. Technical signal and content contradict each other, and Google flags those pages separately in Search Console.

The status code is fixed. What the page itself contains belongs to the site owner, and a considered 404 page offers ways onward instead of a full stop. The routine that keeps dead pages from piling up sits in the guide to site health and redirects.