How HTTP Status Codes Impact SEO

HTTP Status Codes Impact SEO

A new document from Google explains how HTTP status codes affect a site's appearance in search results.

Google has published a new help document that explains how different HTTP status codes affect how a site appears in search results.

A recent tweet suggests that Google's Gary Illyes had a role in putting this document together.

This is the new guide to refer to when you are not sure about the impact of a particular status code on SEO.

Let's take a look at what's included in Google's new guide for site owners and developers.

Much of this may already be familiar to you, but it won't hurt to update your knowledge of status codes with the latest information available.

How do HTTP status codes affect Google search?

The new Google doc covers the 20 most important status codes that Googlebot encounters on the web, and the most common network and DNS errors.

HTTP status codes are generated by the server hosting a site when the browser or crawler requests the content.

For example, if the browser requests content that is no longer hosted on the server, a 404 (Not Found) status code will be generated.

The first digit of the status code indicates which class it belongs to. All 2xx codes indicate a successful crawl, all 3xx codes indicate redirects, etc.

Instead of going through all 20 status codes, I've put together the main takeaways of each category.

HTTP 2xx (success)

These codes mean that Googlebot can crawl the content and move it to the indexing path.

Google points out that the HTTP 2xx status code does not guarantee indexing, it simply means that there are no errors.

The exception is status code 204, which means the page was successfully accessed but no content was found.

Google may display a soft 404 error in Search Console for pages that provide code 204.

HTTP 3xx (redirects)

Not all redirects are created equal.

HTTP status code 301 sends a stronger signal than code 302, 303, or 307 in terms of which URL should be considered canonical.

Status code 429 means Googlebot cannot access the URL because the server is overloaded. These URLs will be kept in the Google index.

HTTP 5xx (Server Errors)

5xx server errors prompt Googlebot to temporarily slow down the crawl speed.

Previously indexed URLs that now contain a server error will eventually be dropped if they continue to serve a 5xx status code.

For more details about these server errors, and information about DNS and server errors, see the full Google Help document.

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