How to fix 404 errors in Google Search Console
Start by not fixing most of them. Google says 404s don’t harm your site’s indexing or ranking.[2] Fix the ones you link to yourself or list in your sitemap, and redirect pages that moved.[1]
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1. Find them
In Search Console, open the Page indexing report and look for Not found (404). It shows only addresses that returned a 404 in the past month.[1] Google may have found an address through a link from another page, or because the page once existed.[1]
2. Decide, one address at a time
| If the address… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Moved to a new page | Redirect it there with a 301.[1] |
| Was deleted, with nothing to replace it | Leave the 404. It is the right answer, and Google treats 410 the same.[2] |
| Is linked from your own pages or in your sitemap | Fix the link, or take the address out of the sitemap.[1] |
| Is a common misspelling of a real page | Redirect it to the page people meant.[2] |
3. What not to do
Don’t redirect every 404 to your homepage, put up filler content, or block the addresses in robots.txt. Google calls these soft 404 errors, and says they make it harder for Google to recognise your site’s structure.[2] A page that shows a “not found” message should also send the 404 code.[1]
What Google does with a 404
Google removes the address from the index if it was indexed, and crawls it less and less often.[3] There is no way to make Googlebot forget an address, so it may keep trying for a while.[1] A 404 has no effect on how fast Google crawls the rest of your site.[3]
Where Convertlyft helps
The free SEO audit reads robots.txt and your sitemap and audits each page it opens, up to 25 pages. Link checking is off on the free scan, so for broken addresses the Page indexing report above is the place to look.
Questions
Do 404 errors hurt SEO?
Google says 404s don’t harm your site’s indexing or ranking, and that in general they won’t affect your site’s search performance.[2]
Should I redirect 404 pages to my homepage?
No. Google says not to redirect them to your homepage, create fake content or block them with robots.txt: these make soft 404 errors.[2]
How long until a 404 leaves the report?
For a deleted page with no replacement, Google says the report should stop showing it after about a month.[2]
Is a 410 better than a 404?
Google currently treats 410 (Gone) the same as 404 (Not found).[2]
Sources
- Search Console Help, “Page indexing report”, support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203, checked 8 November 2026.
- Search Console Help, “404 (Page Not Found) errors”, support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2445990, checked 8 November 2026.
- Google Search Central, “How HTTP Status Codes Affect Google’s Crawlers”, last updated 4 February 2026, developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors, checked 8 November 2026.
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