404 Errors and SEO: When to Redirect, Restore or Leave Them

404 errors do not hurt your SEO on their own: Google treats a 404 as the normal signal that a page no longer exists, drops the URL from its index over time and crawls it less often. The damage comes from what the dead URL used to do, such as rankings, backlinks, internal links and sales, so redirect a 404 when a close replacement exists, restore it when it was removed by mistake, and leave it when it never had value.

This guide is for Shopify and e-commerce teams looking at a pile of "Not found (404)" URLs in Search Console and wondering which ones matter. You'll get what Google actually says about 404s, how to find the ones worth fixing, a decision table for redirect, restore or leave, the exact rules for Shopify redirects, and a 404 page that keeps shoppers on your store.

Do 404 errors hurt SEO?

Not directly. Google's documentation on HTTP status codes says it doesn't index URLs that return a 4xx status, removes previously indexed 4xx URLs over time, and gradually crawls them less. Search Console's own help says a 404 is not necessarily a problem if you removed the page with no replacement. Every store with a changing catalog has some.

A 404 becomes an SEO problem in four situations:

• The page ranked or got traffic. When it 404s, those rankings and clicks disappear with it.
• Other sites link to it. Links that point at a dead URL stop helping your site. A redirect to a relevant page lets that link signal flow to the new URL.
• Your own site links to it. Broken internal links waste crawls and send shoppers to a dead end.
• It's a soft 404. A page that says "not found" or looks empty but returns a 200 status. Google excludes these from Search and reports them as errors.

Broken URLs build up faster than most teams expect. Pew Research Center checked a sample of just under 1 million pages from Common Crawl in October 2023 and found that a quarter of pages from 2013 to 2023 were no longer accessible.

Links rot the same way. In the same study, 23% of news pages and 21% of government pages had at least one broken link, and 54% of Wikipedia pages had at least one broken reference link. If you have run a store for a few years, some of the sites that link to you point at URLs you have since changed.

404 vs 410 vs soft 404 vs redirect

The status code your server returns is what search engines act on. Here is what each one tells Google, based on Google's HTTP status code documentation.

On Shopify, a product or page that doesn't exist returns a true 404. We checked on October 27, 2026 by requesting made-up product URLs on Shopify's Dawn demo store and on a live Shopify store; both returned HTTP 404, and the Dawn 404 page uses the title "404 Not Found." Soft 404s on Shopify usually come from elsewhere: empty collections, search pages with no results, or apps that render a "product unavailable" message on a 200 page.

How to find the 404 errors that matter

Don't try to fix every 404. Build one list, then rank it by what each URL used to be worth.

Score each URL on three things: did it get clicks or impressions, does it have backlinks, and do internal links still point to it. A URL that scores zero on all three can stay a 404. Anything else goes to the decision table in the next section. Our Internal Link Checker helps with the third question, and our guide to crawl errors explains the rest of the Search Console report.

Redirect, restore or leave it alone

Once you know what a URL was worth, the right fix usually follows. Use this table.

When restoring beats redirecting

If the page still has demand and the content still applies, bring it back at the same URL. That is the only option that keeps everything the old page had. It is common after migrations and theme changes, when pages or blog posts go missing without anyone deciding to remove them. Our Shopify SEO migration guide covers how to catch these before launch.

Why the homepage is the wrong destination

Google's site move guidance warns against redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant page such as the homepage, and says these blanket redirects may be treated as soft 404s. A shopper looking for a specific product who lands on the homepage has to start over. If no relevant page exists, an honest 404 is better than a misleading redirect.

How to redirect 404s on Shopify

Shopify has a built-in redirect manager under Content, then Menus, then URL redirects. Shopify's Help Center sets these rules:

• You can only redirect broken URLs. If the old URL still loads a page, the redirect won't fire.
• Draft and unpublished products count as broken. Setting a product to Draft, or removing it from all sales channels, makes its URL return 404, so a redirect will work.
• Visible collections cancel redirects. If you hide a collection and redirect its URL, then make it visible again, Shopify deletes that redirect automatically.
• Some paths are off limits. You can't redirect the fixed paths /products, /collections and /collections/all, collection tag URLs, or paths starting with /cart, /orders, /apps and a few others.
• Limits are generous. Up to 100,000 redirects per store, or 20,000,000 on Shopify Plus.
• Redirects apply across market subfolders set up with Shopify's international tools.

Step by step

1. Export your dead URLs from Search Console's "Not found (404)" report and your backlink tool, and remove the ones that scored zero on traffic, links and internal links.
2. Match each URL to the closest live page. Our free 404 Redirect Mapper suggests the nearest match for each broken URL and exports a redirect map. Review every suggestion by hand.
3. Check that each target is final. Run the map through our Redirect Checker to catch targets that redirect again or return errors.
4. Import the CSV. In URL redirects, choose Import, upload the file (Shopify provides a sample template), review and confirm.
5. Test a sample live. Request 10 to 20 old URLs with the Redirect Checker and confirm each returns a single 301 hop to a page that returns 200.
6. Update internal links in menus, product descriptions and blog posts so they point straight at the new URLs.
7. Recheck in Search Console after a few weeks. Fixed URLs should move into "Page with redirect."

For a batch of changes, Shopify Flow also has a Create URL redirect action that can automate the step.

Discontinued and out-of-stock products

Product URLs cause most e-commerce 404s, and the right answer depends on whether the product is coming back.

• Out of stock, coming back: keep the page live with a clear availability message, a restock sign-up and links to alternatives. Don't draft or delete it, because that turns it into a 404 and throws away its rankings.
• Discontinued, with a successor: draft or delete the old product, then 301 its URL to the successor.
• Discontinued, with no successor but a clear category: 301 to the most specific collection, not the homepage.
• Discontinued, with real search demand on its own: consider keeping the page live as an informational page that says it's discontinued and recommends alternatives. This keeps the URL useful for shoppers who search the old product name.
• Seasonal or one-off products with no traffic: let them 404.

Whatever you choose, make sure the product's structured data stays honest. If the page stays live, the availability in your schema should match what the page says. Our guide to product schema on Shopify explains how availability is marked up.

Redirect mistakes that cost rankings

A bad redirect can be worse than the 404 it replaced. These are the patterns to avoid, drawn from Google's site move guidance.

• Chains. Google recommends redirecting straight to the final destination. If you can't, keep chains to about three hops at most and never five or more. Every new redirect map should point old URLs at the current URL, not at an older redirect. Our guide to redirect chains shows how to flatten them.
• Removing redirects too soon. Google advises keeping redirects for as long as possible, generally at least one year. On Shopify, with 100,000 slots, there is rarely a reason to delete them.
• Blanket redirects to the homepage or a single "all products" collection, which can be treated as soft 404s.
• Using 302s for permanent moves. Google reads a 302 as a weak signal, so the old URL may stay in the index longer.
• Redirecting to pages that are noindexed, blocked in robots.txt or about to be deleted. The redirect ends at another dead end.

Build a 404 page that keeps shoppers

Some visitors will hit dead URLs no matter what you do. A good 404 page turns that into a second chance to sell. Google's guidance says custom 404 pages exist for users, should keep your site's look and navigation, and must still return a real 404 status so they don't get indexed.

On Shopify, the 404 page is a template in your theme, which you can edit in the theme editor. Add:

• A short, plain message that the page has moved or no longer exists.
• A search bar, since shoppers often know what they wanted.
• Links to your best-selling collections and products.
• A link to the homepage and to customer support.

Then confirm it still returns a 404 status with the Redirect Checker or any HTTP header tool. A 404 page that returns 200 is a soft 404.

A monthly 404 routine

404s are maintenance, not a one-time project. Once a month, open the Search Console Page indexing report, export new "Not found (404)" and "Soft 404" URLs, score them on traffic, links and internal links, and redirect or restore the ones that matter. Add a redirect check to every catalog cleanup, theme change and migration. For a wider view of crawl health, our technical SEO audit checklist covers the rest.

If your store has thousands of broken URLs after a migration or replatform, our technical SEO team can help you map them. Get in touch and we'll show you which ones are worth recovering first.