Not found (404) means Google tried to fetch a URL and received a response saying the page doesn't exist. Google finds these URLs through links — both on your own website and on others — and through older versions of your sitemap.
Not all 404s are a problem. A page that has been deliberately removed can return a 404, and Google will eventually stop trying. It only needs fixing when the URL is supposed to work.
Which 404s should you fix?
- Pages that exist but have moved to a new URL, for example after a redesign.
- Pages that other websites link to, or that previously received traffic from Google.
- URLs that your own pages link to. These are broken links for your visitors too.
Click a URL in the Search Console list and then open the inspection tool — you can often see where Google found the link.
How to fix them
- Moved page: redirect the old URL to the new one using a 301 redirect.
- Broken internal link: update the link so it points directly to the correct page. A redirect helps Google, but the link should be fixed as well.
- Removed page with no replacement: let it return 404. Don't redirect all old URLs to the home page. Google treats this as a soft 404 error, and visitors end up in the wrong place.
Once you've made your fixes, open the issue under Indexing and Pages and click Validate fix.
If it says Soft 404
This means the page returns a success response, but Google thinks it looks like an error page. This often applies to empty category pages, search results with no matches, and out-of-stock products. Either give the page proper content, or have it return a 404 or redirect to a page that replaces it.
Find broken links across your entire website
The SEO test at admax.se follows links across up to 50 pages and lists any that lead to an error page, both on your own site and on external websites.