HTTP Status Codes for SEO

What each response code tells Google, and when to use it.

Every time Googlebot requests a URL, the server's status code decides what happens next. A 200 sends the content on to indexing; a redirect points Google at another URL and says whether the move is permanent; a 4xx says the page doesn't exist; and a 5xx or 429 tells Google the server is struggling, so it slows down. Getting these right is the cheapest technical SEO there is, and getting them wrong, for example returning 200 for a missing page, quietly wastes crawling and confuses indexing.

This table follows Google Search Central's documentation of how it handles status codes. Google follows up to 10 redirect hops in a chain before giving up, treats 301 and 308 as strong signals that the target should be canonical and 302 and 307 as weak ones, and treats 404 and 410 almost identically. A 5xx is temporary at first, but errors that last for days will drop pages from the index, so maintenance should be short and return 503.

2xx Success

Code	Name	How Google treats it	Use it for
200	OK	Passes the content on to indexing. Indexing isn't guaranteed.	Every page you want indexed
201	Created	Waits a limited time for content, then passes whatever it got on to indexing.	API responses, not pages
202	Accepted	Same as 201: waits a limited time, then passes the content on.	API responses, not pages
204	No Content	Nothing to index. Search Console may report the URL as a soft 404.	Never for a page you want indexed

3xx Redirection

Google follows up to 10 hops; point redirects straight at the final URL.

Code	Name	How Google treats it	Use it for
301	Moved Permanently	Follows it, and treats it as a strong signal that the target should be canonical.	Permanent moves: new URL, HTTPS, domain change
302	Found	Follows it, and treats it as a weak signal that the target should be canonical.	Temporary moves where the old URL comes back
303	See Other	Follows it like a 302.	After a form submission
304	Not Modified	The content is the same as at the last crawl. Signals may be recalculated; no other effect.	Conditional requests (If-Modified-Since, ETag)
307	Temporary Redirect	Follows it like a 302: a weak canonical signal.	Temporary moves that must keep the request method
308	Permanent Redirect	Treated the same as a 301.	Permanent moves that must keep the request method

4xx Client errors

Code	Name	How Google treats it	Use it for
400	Bad Request	The content is ignored and the URL is treated as not existing. Indexed URLs are removed.	Malformed requests
401	Unauthorized	Treated like a 404: not indexed. Not a way to slow down crawling.	Pages that need a login
403	Forbidden	Treated like a 404: not indexed. Not a way to slow down crawling.	Pages nobody may see
404	Not Found	Not indexed; indexed URLs drop out and crawling of them slows over time. Doesn't hurt the rest of the site.	Pages that never existed or are gone
410	Gone	Treated the same as a 404.	Pages removed on purpose
411	Length Required	Treated like other 4xx errors: not indexed.	Requests missing Content-Length
429	Too Many Requests	Treated as a server error: Google slows its crawling down. Not a 'doesn't exist' signal.	Rate limiting

5xx Server errors

Code	Name	How Google treats it	Use it for
500	Internal Server Error	Crawling slows down. Indexed URLs are kept for a while, then dropped if the errors continue.	Unexpected failures
502	Bad Gateway	Same as 500: crawling slows down, and long-lasting errors remove URLs.	A proxy or CDN couldn't reach the origin
503	Service Unavailable	Same as 500. The usual choice for planned downtime, ideally with a Retry-After header.	Maintenance windows of hours, not days

When robots.txt itself returns an error

The status code of /robots.txt changes how Google crawls the whole site.

robots.txt status	What Google does
2xx	Google follows the rules in the file.
3xx	Google follows at least five redirect hops, then stops and treats robots.txt as a 404.
4xx (except 429)	Treated as if there were no robots.txt: everything may be crawled.
429 and 5xx	Google stops crawling the site for the first 12 hours while it retries, then uses the last good copy for up to 30 days. After that it depends on whether the rest of the site is reachable.

Good to know

Soft 404s

A page that says 'not found' or is nearly empty but returns 200 is a soft 404. Search Console reports them. Return a real 404 or 410 for missing pages, or redirect to a closely related page if one exists; redirecting everything to the home page is treated as a soft 404 too.

Don't use 4xx to slow crawling

Returning 403 or 404 to Googlebot to reduce load removes pages from the index. If crawling is too heavy, return 429 or 503 briefly, which Google reads as a request to slow down.