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Check for soft 404s: does a missing page really return 404

harmlessSEO checksdebian, ubuntu
Adjust the values, the command updates live
user@server
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{redirect_url}\n' https://example.com/diese-seite-gibt-es-nicht-$RANDOM

Appends a random path to the domain and shows the status code and, if present, the redirect target. Correct is 404 or 410. Google treats a 200 with an error page, or a blanket redirect to the homepage, as a soft 404, and such URLs needlessly stay in the crawl.

Note: The URL must end with a slash. $RANDOM works in bash and zsh.

Also searched as

  • detect soft 404
  • error page returns status 200
  • check 404 page status code
  • missing page redirects to homepage

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