1script - 2:22 am on Jun 8, 2010 (gmt 0)

@BradleyT:

Looking at my other sites: you are correct! Not only Soft 404 shows up on pages returning 200 but they have also started to creep up on properly 301-ed pages as well! This is killing me: I have moved a part of a site to a new domain and due to large amount of redirects and I have a script that converts old URL structure into new. The result of that script is a 301 header. No content (Content-Length: 0). I would have understood why they could not have gotten it rights if there was content after the 301 header, but I triple checked everything with HTTP Viewer and it's just a 301. So how come 301 is no longer a 301?

This is getting ridiculous. I think this has not been well thought out at all: even the intended design of the fix is not working well : a valid 200 OK header page is deemed by Google (my emphasis) to be a 404. Now these 301 redirects are being completely erroneously considered 404? This really must be Google's most botched project of the year (and we are not even half way into 2010!)