Google: We Only Discover Links On Pages With 200 Status Codes

Aug 26, 2015 - 8:23 am 9 by

Chalkboard1 Google 1900px

The other day, we explained that even links on soft 404 pages are not followed by Google. We knew this was the case with hard 404s but we were not confident about that with soft 404 pages.

Soft 404 pages are pages that return a 200 status code but in reality should be returning a 404 status code, it is incredibly common to see this practice.

But Google's John Mueller added one more tidbit on Twitter saying that first, Google needs to determine if the page should be a soft 404 or not.

So it crawls a page, it returns a 200 status. But then Google has to analyze the page to determine if the page should be really a 404. So maybe at some point before the soft 404 label is associated with the page, Google may crawl the links on the page and pass link juice? But after the soft 404 label is associated with it, all of that goes away?

John Mueller said that Google will only crawl links on pages that return a 200 status code.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 10, 2025

Mar 10, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Ads

Google AI Mode Ads Will Be Coming

Mar 10, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Expands Site Reputation Abuse Policy Manual Actions Next Steps

Mar 10, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Responds To Publishers Concerns On AI Mode

Mar 10, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Knowledge Panel With Expandable Places Map

Mar 10, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Search Knowledge Panels Larger Font

Mar 10, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Maps Views Now Goes Offline