The Inevitable 404You're running a thriving ecommerce site, dropping old products and adding new ones. It's business as usual. But what happens when a customer lands on a product page you've removed?The reality is that 404s are a common and inevitable part of an ecommerce site's lifecycle. But with so many conflicting opinions on how to handle them, it's easy to get confused.We're here to dispel the myths and provide a strategic, experience-backed approach to handling 404s that prioritises both your business and your customers.What is a "404"? First things first: a 404 HTTPS error is simply a "Not Found" response code that indicates the page you're looking for does not exist on the server. (We've got a list of all the most common HTTPS response codes right here.)When a search engine bot or a user tries to access a page that has been removed, the server sends back this message. It’s an unavoidable part of managing an ecommerce site, especially when you drop products from your catalogue.MailchimpWhat's a "Soft" 404?On the other hand, a "soft" 404 is a page that returns a 200 OK status code but looks like a 404 page to a bot. In ecommerce, this is pretty common: collections, promotional ranges, or even entire categories can have all products removed while the page they're housed on stays live.Crawlers and bots reach the page, see that it serves a "200 OK" status but that the page is essentially empty, and perceive it as a "soft" 404. "This page is accessible and live so we thought we'd find something on it, but it's empty - looks like a mistake!"This is a problem because it tells a search engine that the page is working properly, even though it's not. This can cause the search engine to waste its time and crawling budget on a page that provides no value, which is a major red flag for the health of your site.Soft 404s are a whole other issue (hint: you should deal with them!) so let's get back to typical 404s.How Search Engines & AI See 404sSo, what’s the biggest my...