'Increase in soft 404 errors' Webmasters notification. What to do?

[Martin_S]

I've received a Webmasters notification about an 'increase in soft 404 errors'.

When we had the new site launched three months ago we did away with some old pages, which we either 301 to new equivalents, or, we return a 'Oops, that page seems to be missing' 404 page which has some links to important parts on the site that might be of use to the visitor.

Any ideas why Webmasters is issuing the warning? Any suggestions as to what to do?

Thanks

[Elchanan]

We have an internal site search that moved into HTTPS. Google sending me the same message although all errors are redirect from HTTP to HTTPS with no issue. The hosting company checked that too - No errors at all!

[MarcLevy]

How many pages did you decide to leave and return a 404 page for? This will probably be your issue.

My recommendation would be to do something else with those old URLs as leaving them pointing to a 404 page is not the best idea IMO. If any of those old URLs have links pointing into them, you will be losing that value having them go to a 404. Other options are:

• Send all those URLs to the homepage, this is generally a good place for a user to begin their journey if they need to search and find what they are looking for.

• or.. create a specific page highlighting the fact that a new site was launched and that what they are looking for is no longer available, providing info on where to go from there. Similar to the 'Oops, that page seems to be missing' 404 page you have but without it being an actual 404.

Hope this helps.