Status codes are the server's one-line answer to every request: "here it is", "it moved", "it's gone", "I'm broken". Visitors rarely see them, but search engines read every one, and they directly decide what happens to your pages in the index.

Key takeaways from this guide

The five families

The codes that matter

200 OK

The page exists and is returned normally. Every page you want indexed should return 200. Watch out for error pages that also return 200; these are "soft 404s" and Google reports them in Search Console.

301 Moved Permanently / 308 Permanent Redirect

The page has moved for good. Google transfers signals to the new URL and eventually shows only the new one. Use for URL changes, domain moves and http to https. Details in our redirects guide.

302 Found / 307 Temporary Redirect

Temporary moves. Google may keep the original URL indexed. Fine for short-term changes; a mistake for permanent ones.

304 Not Modified

Returned when a browser or crawler asks "has this changed since last time?" and it hasn't. It saves bandwidth. Google uses conditional requests too, so supporting 304 properly can make crawling more efficient on large sites.

404 Not Found

The page doesn't exist. Google drops 404 URLs from the index after recrawling them a few times. Perfectly normal for deleted pages; a problem only when important pages or pages with backlinks 404 by accident. See how to fix broken links.

410 Gone

Like 404, but explicitly permanent. Google may drop 410 URLs slightly faster. Useful when you deliberately remove a batch of content and want it gone.

403 Forbidden

The server refuses access. Sometimes caused by security plugins or firewalls blocking Googlebot by mistake. If Search Console shows 403s for public pages, check your firewall and bot protection settings.

429 Too Many Requests

The server is rate-limiting. If it happens to Googlebot, Google slows down crawling. Occasional 429s are fine; constant ones mean your server or protection rules are too strict.

500 Internal Server Error

Something broke on the server: a PHP error, a database failure, a bad configuration. Occasional 500s are tolerated; persistent ones make Google crawl less, and pages that keep failing may be dropped from the index.

502 Bad Gateway / 504 Gateway Timeout

A proxy or load balancer couldn't get a response from the server behind it, often because the server is overloaded or too slow. Treated like other server errors.

503 Service Unavailable

The correct code for temporary downtime, such as planned maintenance. It tells Google "come back later" without dropping pages. Add a Retry-After header with the expected duration. Don't leave a 503 up for days; extended unavailability can still cause pages to drop.

Maintenance done right

A common mistake is a maintenance page that returns 200 ("everything is fine, and this page says 'Under maintenance'"). If Google crawls during that time, it may index the maintenance message in place of your content. Return 503 instead:

HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable
Retry-After: 3600

How to check status codes

• A single URL: our HTTP headers checker shows the status code and all response headers, and the website status checker tells you quickly whether a site is up.
• Redirect chains: the redirect checker shows the code at every hop.
• Links on a page: the broken link checker lists the status of every link.
• Across the site: Search Console's Pages report and Crawl stats (Settings → Crawl stats) show response codes Googlebot received over time.

Patterns to watch in Crawl stats

Knowing these codes turns a lot of SEO mysteries into simple diagnoses. When a page disappears from Google, the status code it returns is the first thing to check.