The missing page that says it is fine
A broken link costs a visitor. A missing page pretending to be a working page costs you search presence, and almost nobody notices it because it looks normal in a browser.
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Short answer
A missing page should return a response that says so, not a normal response with empty content. A page returning success while showing nothing is a soft error, and search engines store it as a real page. Broken internal links waste crawling effort and lose visitors at the same time.
The response matters more than the design
When a page does not exist, the server should say so in its response, not just on screen. That code is what tells a search engine to stop storing the address.
A nicely designed missing page that returns a success response is worse than a plain one that returns the correct code. The visitor experience is identical and the machine consequence is opposite.
This is called a soft error, and it is invisible to everybody except the tools that check for it. Search Console reports them plainly.
A nicely designed missing page returning a success response is worse than a plain one returning the correct code. The visitor experience is identical and the machine consequence is opposite.
Why soft errors are costly
The engine believes the page is real, stores it, and may show it. Somebody arrives from a search and finds nothing.
It also spends crawling effort on addresses that do not exist, which on a large site means less effort spent on the pages that do.
And your reports become useless. A hundred stored pages that are actually missing make the indexing report impossible to read.
They also make your reports unreadable. A hundred stored pages that are actually missing turn the indexing report into noise.
Making the missing page useful
Say plainly that the page is not there. Do not apologize at length or make a joke that wastes the visitor's time.
Offer the three or four routes most people would want: the homepage, the main service sections, the contact route, and a search box if you have one.
Keep the site navigation in place. Somebody who arrives at a missing page has not left your business, and the menu is how they carry on.
- Say plainly that the page is not there
- Keep the site navigation in place
- Offer the homepage and the main sections
- Offer the contact route
- Offer a search box if you have one
- Return the correct response code, not a success
Finding broken links
Search Console lists the addresses it tried and could not fetch, along with the page it followed to get there. That referring page is where the fix belongs.
Free crawling tools will walk your whole site and list every link that fails, which catches internal ones before a visitor does.
Check outbound links too. A link to a supplier who redesigned their site is your broken link as far as a visitor is concerned.
Check outbound links too. A link to a supplier who redesigned their site is your broken link as far as a visitor is concerned.
Fix or redirect
If the page moved, redirect the old address permanently to its replacement. That preserves what the address earned and keeps the visitor moving.
If the page is genuinely gone and has no equivalent, let it return a missing response. That is honest and engines handle it properly.
Only redirect to something related. Sending a deleted product page to the homepage helps nobody and is treated as a missing page anyway.
Only redirect to something related. Sending a deleted product page to the homepage is treated as a missing page anyway, as covered in redirects.
The links you cannot control
Other sites link to you with typos, old addresses and truncated links. Those arrive as missing pages through no fault of yours.
Where a mistyped address gets meaningful traffic, redirect it to the right place. It is free and it recovers visitors somebody else lost.
Where it is one stray request a year, leave it. Chasing every missing address to zero is effort with no return.
How ours behave
Sites published through Website Builder Studio return a real missing page response for anything that does not exist, with the navigation intact and the main routes offered.
Every page passes a check that runs before anything publishes, validated against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards, and internal links are verified to resolve rather than assumed to.
The soft error case cannot arise, because the missing page is served by the same process that knows what actually exists.
Questions people ask
Do broken links hurt my ranking?
Not directly as a scoring factor. They waste crawling effort, lose visitors, and suggest a site nobody maintains, all of which matter in their own right.
Should every missing page redirect somewhere?
No. If there is no equivalent page, a missing response is correct and honest. Redirecting to something unrelated is worse for everybody.
What is a soft error?
A page that returns a success response while showing no real content. Search engines store it as a real page, which is why it is worth finding and fixing.
How often should I check?
Monthly in Search Console, and always after a redesign. Those are the two moments broken links appear in quantity.
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