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Google's Gary Illyes said on the latest Search Off The Record podcast that soft 404s, pages Google thinks are 404s but return a 200 server status code, do waste crawl budget. However, 404s or 410s do not waste crawl budget, Gary added.
This came up at the 26:10 mark in the video where Gary said, "404/410, they don't waste crawl budget." He added, "neither do robotted URLs because we didn't get back anything, just a status code."
But when it comes to soft 404s, he said "if you do with, on the other hand, a soft 404, that's a good job. You're not putting anything in the index and wasted crawl budget."
Hat tip to Glenn Gabe for this:
More from @methode: As Gary explains, "With soft 404s, you aren't adding anything to the index AND you're wasting crawl budget."
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 26, 2022
Me: Again, 404s are not a sign of low quality & can be good. Don't blindly redirect 404s elsewhere unless it makes sense: https://t.co/2bPVSE9HLT pic.twitter.com/Ugy6UGJSk4
Forum discussion at Twitter.
