Playbook: Hunt down soft 404s that are silently deindexing pages

Playbook: Hunt down soft 404s that are silently deindexing pages
Google tags thin or empty pages as 'Soft 404' and drops them even though they return 200. Here's the cleanup.

Setup:
— GSC Page Indexing > Soft 404 bucket, export the list
— Categorize each: genuinely empty (out-of-stock, expired) vs falsely flagged (thin but valid)
— For genuinely empty: return a real 404/410 or redirect to a relevant page
— For falsely flagged: add substantive unique content, then Validate Fix
— Watch for empty-state templates ('No results found' on 200) Google reads these as soft 404

What it does well: GSC names the exact URLs and lets you batch-validate.

Where it falls short: the 'too thin' threshold is undisclosed, and out-of-stock ecommerce pages cycle in and out constantly.

Pros:
— Named URL list
— Batch validate
Cons:
— Hidden quality threshold
— Recurs on ecommerce

Best for: ecommerce and large content sites. NOT for small sites with no thin/empty pages.