What Is a 404 Error Code? Common Causes and Fixes

A “404 Not Found” error is one of the most common issues you can run into while browsing the web, and if you own a website, one of the most frustrating things your visitors can hit. It looks like a simple message, but behind the scenes it tells a story: the page your browser asked for is not where the server expected it to be. For a new visitor arriving at your brand for the first time, that dead end can be the difference between a conversion and a lost customer.

Beyond user frustration, 404 errors can quietly chip away at your SEO health, waste crawl budget, and damage trust in your site. The good news is that most 404 issues are fixable, and Google itself has become much clearer in recent years about what actually matters and what does not. This guide walks you through everything you need to know in 2026: what a 404 really is, when it is harmful, when it is perfectly fine, how to find and fix the bad ones, and how to turn your “Page Not Found” into something that actually helps your visitors.

What Causes a 404 Error Message?

A 404 error is a standard HTTP status indicating that the requested resource does not exist on the server. The error itself is always the same, but the cause can vary widely. Think of it like an address book lookup: a browser asks the server for a specific file or page, and if that address is unknown, the server has no choice but to say “not found.” Below are the five most common reasons this happens.

The simplest and most common cause. A visitor (or a link somewhere else on the internet) asks for a URL that was never created, or that contains a typo. Visiting something like https://www.example.com/this-page-does-not-exist will trigger the default 404 response, usually showing a plain “Not Found” message.

Most default 404 pages are bare and unhelpful. Site owners who care about user experience replace them with a custom page that includes the logo, a search bar, links to popular pages, and a route back to the homepage. That small change alone can reduce bounce rates noticeably.

Web browsers rely on the exact URL structure to retrieve pages. When you rename, relocate, or delete a page without setting up a redirect, every link pointing to the old URL becomes broken, and every click returns a 404. This is especially common after site redesigns, CMS migrations, or structural changes to categories and slugs.

The right approach is to use a 301 redirect (permanent) from the old URL to the best available replacement. That tells both browsers and search engines that the content has moved, and it preserves most of the SEO value the old URL had earned.

Sometimes the page actually exists, but the server is not configured to serve it correctly. This can happen after a WordPress permalink change, a broken rewrite rule in .htaccess, a missing index file, or a misconfigured virtual host. The file is on disk, but the server does not know how to route requests to it, so it returns 404.

A broken link is any hyperlink that points to a page that no longer exists. It can be internal (one of your own pages linking to another that was deleted) or external (another site linking to content you removed). Broken internal links are especially bad because they leak crawl budget and create a worse user experience, and they are fully within your control to fix.

Some 404s are actually caused by file permission problems. If the server cannot read a file because of incorrect permissions (for example, 000 or 600 on a public HTML file), it may respond with a 404 instead of a proper 403. Reviewing file and folder permissions in your hosting control panel can surface these cases quickly. For most public web files and folders, the standard permissions are 644 for files and 755 for folders.

Hard 404 vs Soft 404 vs 410: What’s the Difference?

This is the single biggest gap in most older 404 articles, and it is critical in 2026. Not every “page not found” is the same thing from Google’s perspective.

🔴 Hard 404 (the correct behavior)

A hard 404 is what should happen when a page does not exist. The server returns both a 404 HTTP status code and a “Not Found” message. Both browsers and search engines immediately understand that the page is missing, and Googlebot will eventually drop it from the index. There is nothing wrong with hard 404s, they are the technically correct response.

🟡 Soft 404 (the problematic one)

A soft 404 is when the page looks like a “not found” page to the user, but the server returns a 200 OK status code instead of 404. This sends mixed signals: humans see an error, but search engines think the page is a normal, valid page. Google then wastes crawl budget revisiting empty or error pages, and may flag them as “Soft 404” under the “Page Indexing” report in Google Search Console.

Common causes of soft 404s include:

⚫ 410 Gone (permanent removal)

A 410 status code means the content has been intentionally and permanently removed with no replacement. In practice, Google’s John Mueller has stated multiple times that Google treats 404 and 410 almost identically for SEO purposes, and most site owners do not need to worry about the distinction. Use 410 only when you are absolutely sure the page will never return (for example, deleted user-generated content or legally-required takedowns).

Are 404 Errors Actually Bad for SEO?

There is a persistent myth that 404 errors hurt your rankings. The reality, confirmed directly by Google, is more nuanced.

So what actually does hurt your SEO? It is not the 404 itself, it is everything around it:

• Internal links pointing to 404 pages. These waste crawl budget and create a poor user experience. Fix or remove them.
• Valuable pages returning 404 by accident. If a page with backlinks and traffic suddenly 404s after a migration, you lose link equity. Set up a 301 redirect to the closest equivalent.
• 404s in your XML sitemap. Your sitemap should only list URLs you want indexed. 404s in the sitemap confuse crawlers.
• Soft 404s. As described above, these actively harm indexing and crawl efficiency.
• Redirecting every 404 to the homepage. Google’s Martin Splitt has explicitly warned that blanket homepage redirects are treated as soft 404s and can negatively impact rankings.

Tools to Find 404 Errors on Your Site

Finding 404 errors manually does not scale. Use the right tool for the job, and run audits regularly, at least monthly for active sites.

🔍 Free and Essential

Google Search Console is the first place to look. The “Pages” report under “Indexing” shows both “Not found (404)” and “Soft 404” buckets, along with the URLs that referred Google to each missing page. It is free, and if your site is not already verified there, that is the single most impactful thing you can do today.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that maps every link on your site and reports status codes, including 404s, redirect chains, and broken images. The free version handles up to 500 URLs, which is enough for smaller sites.

🔍 Paid SEO Suites

For larger sites or agencies, Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz all include site audit modules that flag 404 errors, broken backlinks, and internal link issues. Ahrefs is particularly strong for identifying external sites that link to your 404 pages, which you can then reclaim by redirecting or reaching out.

🔍 Browser Extensions

For a quick check of a single page, extensions like Check My Links or LinkMiner for Chrome will scan every link on the page and highlight the broken ones in red with one click. Useful before publishing a new article or after editing a page heavy with outbound links.

🔍 WordPress Plugins

If you run WordPress, the free Broken Link Checker or Redirection plugin will monitor your site continuously and log every 404 a visitor hits. Redirection also lets you create 301 rules directly from the logged 404 list, which is a huge time saver.

How to Fix 404 Errors: Step by Step

Once you have a list of 404 errors, you need to decide what to do with each one. The right action depends on whether the URL should exist, whether there is a replacement, and whether the page has any traffic or backlinks.

📋 Method 1: Redirect with 301 (for moved pages)

If the content still exists at a new URL, or if there is a clearly equivalent page, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This is the most common fix.

On AEserver hosting, you can do this in two ways:

Log in to cPanel, find the “Redirects” tool under the “Domains” section, and set the type to “Permanent (301)”. Follow the full walkthrough in our guide: How to Redirect Your Website to Any Page or External Domain.

Edit your site’s .htaccess file using cPanel File Manager or FTP, and add a redirect rule. A simple example:

Redirect 301 /old-page/ https://example.com/new-page/

For pattern-based redirects (redirecting entire directories or using regular expressions), see our detailed knowledge base article: URL Redirect and Rewrite Using the .htaccess File.

📋 Method 2: Create a Helpful Custom 404 Page

For URLs that genuinely should not exist and have no good replacement, serve a proper 404, but make that 404 page useful. A good custom 404 page includes:

• A clear, friendly message explaining the page was not found
• A prominent search bar
• Links to your most popular content or main categories
• A link back to the homepage
• Your site’s normal navigation and branding

In WordPress, most modern themes include a 404.php template you can customize. Edit it via Appearance > Theme File Editor, or use a page builder plugin that supports custom 404 templates.

📋 Method 3: Fix File Permissions

If a 404 is caused by permission problems, use the File Manager in cPanel to check and correct them. Right-click the file, choose “Change Permissions,” and set:

For a full cPanel walkthrough, see our guide on mastering cPanel for WordPress hosting.

📋 Method 4: Check or Regenerate WordPress Permalinks

On WordPress, a classic cause of site-wide 404s is a broken permalink structure. This usually happens after migrating hosts or editing .htaccess. The fix is simple:

Log in to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to Settings > Permalinks.

Simply clicking Save regenerates the rewrite rules in your .htaccess file. This resolves most WordPress-wide 404 problems instantly.

If that does not help, you may need to manually rewrite .htaccess or check for plugin conflicts. Our full guide to common WordPress issues and their solutions covers the deeper troubleshooting steps.

📋 Method 5: Temporarily Disable .htaccess to Diagnose

If you suspect a directive inside .htaccess is causing the 404, rename the file to .htaccess_old and reload your site. If the 404 disappears, you have confirmed the file is the source. Open it in a text editor, comment out rules one section at a time, and narrow down the offending line.

📋 Method 6: Restore from Backup

If 404 errors appeared suddenly across your entire site, something broke: a failed update, a corrupted file, a bad migration. Restoring a recent backup from before the errors is often the fastest fix. For a full explanation of why regular backups matter and how to restore them, see our guide on WordPress backups.

404 Errors in the Age of AI Crawlers

One thing that has changed significantly since older 404 guides were written: your site is no longer crawled only by Googlebot and Bingbot. In 2026, AI crawlers like GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended all visit your site to index content for large language models and AI-powered search answers.

The practical implications:

• Broken internal links waste the crawl budget of AI bots as well, reducing your chances of being cited in AI-generated answers.
• Valuable pages that 404 lose visibility in both traditional search and AI overviews.
• A clean internal link structure now benefits you in two distinct channels: classic SERPs and AI answer engines.

The fundamentals have not changed, but the payoff for keeping your site tidy has grown.

Final Thoughts

A 404 error is not a disaster, it is simply the correct technical answer when a page does not exist. What matters is whether the 404 is intentional (a page that was deleted and has no replacement) or accidental (a page that should exist, or one with valuable backlinks that you forgot to redirect).

Handle the intentional ones with a well-designed custom 404 page that keeps visitors on your site. Handle the accidental ones with 301 redirects to the right replacement. Monitor both with Google Search Console and a regular crawl. Do that consistently, and 404 errors stop being a threat and become just another part of healthy site maintenance.

If you are hosting your site with AEserver, every tool you need is already built into cPanel: file manager, redirect editor, backup wizard, and permission controls. For reliable, fast hosting in the UAE with full cPanel access, check out AEserver’s web hosting plans or our managed WordPress hosting.

×