Coverage Report

To view the COVERAGE REPORT in Google Search Console, you'll have to click on the "Coverage" tab.

To find soft 404 errors using Google Search Console's Coverage Report, ensure you select the "Error" tab and look for:

• Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404
• Soft 404
• Not Found (404)

You will need to click the correct error description in order to get more details on the particular page. You could also make use of the URL inspection tool to find soft 404 errors. You will either copy and paste the page URL or enter it into the URL inspection tool and click "Enter".

From the result, you will have to click on "View Crawled Page" and also click on "More Info".

The fastest way to get your site to return a 404 error code for missing or invalid pages is to delete the page. The moment you do this, your HTTP server will display the 404 pages when a request is made for such pages.

You can also improve the contents of your page to show search engines that the page returning the soft 404 error has some value and this will make the error code go away.

Lastly, you could also redirect the page to a valid page by adding a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file. By this action, you are simply telling search engine crawlers that the page causing the error has been moved to a new location.

Conclusion

As a webmaster, you will need to perform frequent checks on your site to ensure your technical SEO is working just fine.

One of the errors that could be discovered is the soft 404 error and this guide helps you identify and fix them by yourself.