Page available but google refers it as soft 404

[LaGoule]

Dear community,

I have a post (custom post on wordpress as geodirectory place) that is listed under "soft 404" on the search.google.

I am trying again and again but google reverts:

URL is not available to Google
This page cannot be indexed. Pages that aren't indexed can't be served on Google. See the details below to learn why it can't be indexed
Last crawl:21 May 2024, 02:43:20
Crawled as Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed? --> Yes
Page fetch --> Successful
Indexing allowed? --> Yes

I do not get more details and the support says that the page is reachable but not user friendly. It is a very standard post with one picture and a small text of two paragraphs. I guess it is a basic thing but I can't find an explanation not to index it.

Would be great if someone can support me on this one.

Thanks a lot!

LaGoule

[edited by: not2easy at 2:12 am (utc) on May 23, 2024]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[not2easy]

I would suspect that you may not have used proper 301 redirection of all your URLs so that people can view various versions of your URLS that do not agree with the form you have registered with your GSC account.

If all these formats:

http://example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
https://www.example.com

can render pages at your site, you should visit the Apache [webmasterworld.com] forum for help.

[lucy24]

G### originally came up with the term “soft 404” for URLs that ought to return a 404 but instead are redirects, as when any request for a nonexistent page redirects to the home page. (A loathsome habit which they were right to disapprove.) But then they decided to apply the same label to any page they don’t like. The one time I remember getting the dreaded “soft 404” was a page that had nothing but a background image--that is, to the user it looks like any image, but is coded as background because reasons--and assorted navigation. I added a single line of text, and they were happy.

A picture and two paragraphs seems like it ought to be enough to satisfy them. Is this one page different in any way from other pages that are indexed?

[SEO Learner 04]

What I know is that a soft 404 occurs when a page is deleted but the server is still responding with 200 status code rather than 404. So, what you should do is that If the page is relevant, create a 301 redirect to your site’s related and relevant page or leave them as 404.

[lucy24]

a page is deleted but the server is still responding with 200 status code rather than 404

This sounds like an improperly configured CMS. (not2easy will know) It doesn't actually matter what the server's own response is, so long as a 404 is sent back to the requester.

[not2easy]

Was the page previously indexed at a different URL? Does the page pass CWV? It sounds like they don't think the page content is delivering the content described in its title/description. I would carefully look at that.

As for CMS misconfiguration, the settings need to match the format of internal links. In WP, the permalink structure must use one format. WP will use several formats, you need to choose URLs that match the permalink structure for your sitemap and not try to index all of the WP variations as if they are separate pages. They are duplicates. Most SEO plugins that generate sitemaps offer you options.

[LaGoule]

Thanks everyone and sorry for the late reply. It is plenty of cool hints!
It looks like that page has poor performance (47/100 on the CWV). Also the different languages are working on a multisite architecture and it looks like duplicates are not handled properly.
I am quite frustrated by the Google dashboard on indexing... hundreds of issues, poor level of information, no possibility to remove old pages... :(
I will try step by step and will share if I have any interesting conclusion.

[not2easy]

No way to remove Pages

It depends only because we still do not know whether this is WP, HTML or what - if you control the meta for each page, you can remove pages using the "gone" meta, like

<meta name="GOOGLEBOT" content="unavailable_after: 18 Jun 2024 15:00:00 UTC">

to replace your current "index, follow" tag.

Then remove the page, from the site, its navigation and sitemap. Keep records to be sure it is gone when you say it will be.

[Sir Debugalot]

From my experience you get soft-404's when you have pages without any "content", but just a page with your navigation and maybe a generic error message, but otherwise empty.

For example you had a number of products that you are selling and google indexes them, but now they are sold out and your CMS displays a generic "items sold out" message on a large number of pages. Now google recognizes them as soft-404.

What you can do:
Display a list of similar available products to to keep the page (and incoming links), or reconfigure your CMS to redirect them to the product category instead.

[not2easy]

Hi Sir_Debugalot and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

reconfigure your CMS to redirect them to the product category instead.

That would surely create a "soft 404" because it is defined as any page not showing the content expected to be found at the URL clicked.