Failure mode: returning 200 on a page that says 'no results'

Failure mode: returning 200 on a page that says 'no results'

Search and filter templates often render "0 results found" with a 200 status. Google catalogs these as soft-404s, and a wall of them lowers trust in the whole template. The status code is lying about the page's value.

Zero-result SOP:
— Step 1. Owner: dev. If the result set is empty after filtering, return 404 (or 410 if permanently gone), not 200.
— Step 2. Owner: dev. For near-empty (1-2 results) pages, either noindex or merge into the parent — define the threshold per template.
— Step 3. Owner: SEO. Crawl edge cases: filters that return nothing. Gate: every empty page returns 404/410, never 200 + noindex-only.
— Step 4. Owner: SEO. Watch GSC "Soft 404". Gate: count trends to near-zero within two crawl cycles.

Guardrail: the HTTP status must tell the truth about whether the page has content.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.