---
title: "404 Not Found"
canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/404"
category: "client-error"
last_verified: "2026-08-11"
source: "https://lemwatch.com"
---

# HTTP 404 Not Found

**TL;DR** — A 404 means the page is missing. Fix the ones that matter (pages with backlinks, traffic, or internal links) by redirecting them with a 301 to the closest live equivalent. Ignore the noise (random scraper URLs, /wp-admin probes on a non-WordPress site). A custom 404 page should help the user find what they were looking for, not just say "not found."

## What it means

HTTP 404 Not Found is the most recognised error code on the web. It tells the client that the server reached but could not find anything matching the requested URL. A 404 does not mean the server is broken — it simply means the path doesn't map to a resource. A small number of 404s is unavoidable (mistyped URLs, expired campaign links, scraper noise). A large or growing number is a warning sign: deleted pages without redirects, broken internal links, a botched migration, or a CMS misconfiguration.

## Common causes

- Page deleted without a 301 redirect to its replacement
- URL structure changed during a redesign or CMS migration
- Internal link points to an old or typo'd path
- External backlinks pointing to URLs that no longer exist
- Bots and scanners probing for common paths (/wp-admin, /.env, /admin)
- Trailing-slash mismatch (/about/ vs /about) when the server isn't configured to normalise
- Case-sensitivity issues (/About vs /about on Linux servers)

## How to fix

- Export your 404 log from Google Search Console (Coverage → Excluded → Not found 404) and from your CDN/server logs
- For each 404 with traffic or backlinks, add a 301 redirect to the closest live equivalent page
- Run a crawler (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or LemWatch's broken link checker) to find internal links pointing to 404s and fix them at the source
- Build a useful custom 404 page: site search, top categories, recent articles, contact link — not just a dead-end message
- Submit an updated XML sitemap so Google re-crawls the corrected structure
- Don't blanket-redirect every 404 to the homepage — Google calls this a "soft 404" and treats it as worse than a clean 404
- For paths that should genuinely be gone forever (deleted product, retired campaign), return 410 Gone instead of 404 so Google deindexes faster

## SEO impact

High SEO impact. 404s waste crawl budget (Googlebot stops crawling broken paths but keeps re-checking them), drop the link equity of inbound backlinks (a backlink to a 404 page gives you nothing), and erode user trust. Google does not penalise sites for having some 404s — it expects them — but it does penalise sites with a high proportion of broken internal links or large numbers of previously-indexed pages now returning 404 without redirects. Sites that migrate without redirects routinely lose 40-80% of organic traffic.

## Monitoring tip

LemWatch crawls your site continuously, catches new 404s the moment they appear, and groups them by source (which page links to the broken URL). It also monitors that pages previously returning 200 don't silently start returning 404 — a classic sign of a botched deploy.

**Related:** [301](https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/301.md), [410](https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/410.md), [451](https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/451.md), [500](https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/500.md)

_Canonical HTML page: https://lemwatch.com/http-status-codes/404_