404 error: what it means and how to fix it (and benefit from it)

A 404 error (404 Not Found) is the response a server gives when the requested page doesn’t exist: the address is wrong, or the page has been deleted or moved without a redirect. You fix it by correcting the link, with a 301 redirect to the right page or with a well-made 404 page.

Every website has a few 404 pages, ours included. The problem isn’t having them: it’s not managing them. In this guide we look at what a 404 error means, when it really matters for Google and how to turn it from a dead end into a way in, with a special eye on anyone running a PrestaShop online shop.

What does a 404 error mean?

A 404 error means “page not found”: the browser reached the server, but the server found nothing at that address. The site works; it’s the single page that’s missing.

The number isn’t random. Every time you open a page, the server responds with a three-digit HTTP status code. Codes starting with 4 indicate a problem with the request (the address), those starting with 5 a problem with the server. Here are the codes you’ll come across most often:

Code	Meaning	When it’s used
200	OK	The page exists and works
301	Moved permanently	The page has a new, permanent address
302	Moved temporarily	The page will come back to the old address
404	Not found	There’s no page at that address
410	Gone	The page has been removed for good
500	Internal server error	A technical problem: it isn’t a 404

You’ll see the same error written in lots of ways: “404 error”, “err 404”, “HTTP 404”, “404 Not Found”, “404 page not found”. In Google Search Console, in the page indexing report, it appears as “Not found (404)”.

Why does a 404 error appear?

A 404 error appears when someone, a person or Google’s crawler, requests an address that doesn’t exist on the server. There are six common causes:

1. Mistyped URL: a wrong letter or an extra slash.
2. Broken link: a link on your site, or on another site, points to a page you’ve deleted or renamed.
3. Page moved without a redirect: you changed the slug of a category or article and the old address was left orphaned.
4. Product disabled or deleted in an online shop.
5. Site redesign or migration without a redirect map. This is the cause that does the most damage, because it hits hundreds of pages at once.
6. Configuration problems: wrong rewrite rules in the .htaccess file, friendly URLs turned off, the wrong language or shop in a multistore setup.

Does a 404 error hurt your site on Google?

Not in itself. Google writes in its guide to 404 errors that they generally don’t harm your site’s indexing or ranking. But a page that’s already indexed and starts returning 404 is removed from the index, and everything it brought in goes with it.

So the real damage is indirect:

• you lose the visits that page got from Google, social media or newsletters;
• you lose the value of the links from other sites that pointed there;
• you lose the customer, who hits a dead end, goes back to Google and clicks on a competitor.

Watch out for two “fixes” that make things worse:

• Redirecting everything to the home page. Someone looking for a product page who ends up on the home page hasn’t solved anything. Google often treats these redirects as soft 404s.
• “Not found” pages that return 200. If the page says “doesn’t exist” but the server responds OK, Google flags it as a soft 404 and keeps wasting time on it.

How do you fix a 404 error as a visitor?

If you hit a 404 error on a site that isn’t yours, try these in order:

1. Check the address in the browser bar: it’s often a typo.
2. Reload the page: sometimes it’s a temporary problem.
3. Go up one level: delete the last part of the address, after the last slash, and press Enter.
4. Use the site’s search, or search Google for the site name plus the topic.
5. Look for an archived copy on the Wayback Machine, if the page really is gone.
6. Let the site know: you’re doing them a favour, because they probably don’t know they have a broken link.

How do you fix 404 errors on your own site, step by step?

To fix 404 errors on your site you need to find them, decide for each one whether to fix the link, set up a 301 redirect or leave the 404, apply the fix and then check it. That’s 4 steps.

1. Find all the 404 pages

These tools are enough for most sites:

Tool	What it tells you	Cost
Google Search Console	The 404 pages Google has seen (reason “Not found (404)”) and who links to them	Free
Bing Webmaster Tools	The same, as seen by Microsoft’s search engine	Free
Screaming Frog SEO Spider	Broken internal links and redirect chains	Free up to 500 URLs
Server logs	Every real 404 request, including bots	Included with your hosting
Google Analytics 4	How many people land on the 404 page and from which page	Free

Start with Search Console: it gives you the right priorities, because it shows you the 404 pages Google knows about, which therefore had visibility.

2. Decide what to do with each 404 page

Not every 404 page needs “fixing”. Use this table:

Situation	What to do
The page has only moved (new slug, new category)	301 redirect from the old address to the new one
The page is gone, but there’s very similar content	301 redirect to the closest content, never a blanket redirect to the home page
The page is gone and has no replacement	Leave the 404, or use a 410
The internal link is mistyped	Fix the link on the page that contains it
Another site links to a wrong address and sends you visits	301 redirect to the right page
Addresses that never existed, generated by bots or attack attempts	Ignore them: 404 is the correct response

3. Apply the fix

• On WordPress, redirects are handled with a dedicated plugin or with the SEO plugin you already use.
• On PrestaShop it depends on the type of page: we’ll come to that shortly.
• On an Apache server you can write redirects in the .htaccess file, for example Redirect 301 /old-page/ /new-page/.

Two rules apply everywhere: no redirect chains (A → B → C, better A → C) and no loops (A → B → A).

4. Check that it works

Use Search Console’s URL Inspection tool, or a crawler, to check that the old address returns 301 and the new one 200. Then, in the pages report, use “Validate fix”. For a small site, a check once a month and after every major change is enough.

What’s the difference between 404, 410 and soft 404?

A 404 says “not found”, a 410 says “removed for good”, and a soft 404 is a page that looks like an error but responds as if everything were fine.

• 404: the normal response for an address that doesn’t exist.
• 410: states explicitly that the content won’t come back. Google, however, treats all 4xx codes except 429 the same way: in practice 404 and 410 have the same effect.
• Soft 404: an empty page, or one that says “not found”, that returns 200. It needs fixing: either it returns a real 404, or it becomes a redirect to a useful page.

How do you handle 404 errors on a PrestaShop online shop?

In a PrestaShop online shop, most 404 pages come from disabled products and renamed categories. For products PrestaShop has a dedicated setting; for everything else you need a module or a server rule.

Offline products. In the product page, SEO section, choose what happens when the product is offline. The options, found in the PrestaShop 8 and 9 code, are:

• use the default behaviour, which you set in Shop Parameters › Product Settings;
• no redirection, showing the product as no longer available with a 200, 404 or 410 code;
• no redirection, showing the 404 or 410 error page;
• permanent (301) or temporary (302) redirection to a category or to another product.

Our practical advice:

The product…	Choice in PrestaShop
is out of stock but will be back	Don’t disable it: leave it online as “unavailable”
is replaced by a new model	301 to the new product
has no replacement, but the category is relevant	301 to the category
has no replacement and the category isn’t relevant	404 or 410 with the error page

Categories, CMS pages and old addresses. PrestaShop’s core doesn’t have a redirect manager for arbitrary addresses: you use a redirect module or a rule in the .htaccess file. Before renaming a category, prepare the redirect.

Upgrades and migrations. Moving from PrestaShop 1.7 to PrestaShop 9 is when the most URLs get lost. Before migrating, export all the indexed addresses, check that the URL rules (in Shop Parameters › Traffic & SEO) stay the same and prepare the redirect map for those that change. If you’re moving from PrestaShop 1.7 to 8 or 9, we developed Shop Migrator to migrate PrestaShop keeping URLs and IDs: product IDs stay the original ones, so with the same URL rules the addresses stay the same too.

We’ve done it ourselves, too. When we rebuilt flagagency.it in 2026, we kept the addresses of all the Italian blog articles identical, including the original of this one. Then we gave every old retired page a 301 to the closest page, and a 410 to those that had no equivalent. If your shop is full of 404 errors and you don’t know where to start, our PrestaShop support will take care of it for you.

How do you create a custom 404 page that keeps visitors?

A good custom 404 page responds with the 404 code, says in one sentence what happened and immediately offers a way out: search, the main sections and a contact. That way, people who land there don’t go back to Google.

Checklist for a 404 page that works for you:

• It really returns 404, not 200 (otherwise it’s a soft 404).
• One clear sentence, in your brand’s tone of voice: no technical codes and no blaming the customer.
• A way out: search bar, main categories, best-selling products, home page.
• A quick contact: WhatsApp, chat or phone, for people in a hurry.
• Same header and footer as the rest of the site, so customers don’t think they’ve ended up somewhere else.
• Accessible: real text, not just an image, sufficient contrast, links reachable by keyboard.
• No automatic redirect after a few seconds: it’s disorienting and doesn’t help Google.
• Measured: in Google Analytics 4, look at which pages visits to the 404 come from. They point you to the broken links to fix.

The 404 page on flagagency.it, for example, has the heading “This page has popped out to run an errand”, two buttons (back to the home page and message us on WhatsApp) and a list of our services. In an online shop we’d also add search and the most visited categories: people arriving from an old link were usually looking for a product.

404 error: what now?

To sum up, to fix 404 errors without losing visits and customers:

1. Find the 404 pages in Search Console.
2. Decide case by case: fix the link, 301 redirect or 404/410.
3. Apply the redirects without chains and without sending everything to the home page.
4. Check in Search Console and repeat the check after every change.
5. Look after your 404 page, because some visitors will land on it anyway.

On small sites it’s an hour’s work. On online shops with thousands of products, or after a migration that went wrong, it’s worth getting help. Flag Agency, a PrestaShop web agency in Frattamaggiore (Naples, Italy), does it every time it builds a PrestaShop online shop: the redirect map is ready before going live. If your problem is site speed instead, read how to choose a PrestaShop server. And if your shop works but doesn’t sell enough, start with our 6 tips to increase conversions.