⭐ Beginner — No coding experience needed
How to Find and Fix 404 and 500 Errors on Your Website
Learn what 400 and 500 HTTP errors are, why they damage your Google rankings, and exactly how to find and fix every broken page on your site. Step by step for complete beginners.
What you will learn in this guide
- What 400 and 500 HTTP errors are and the difference between them
- Why broken pages damage your Google rankings
- How to find every broken page on your site using the HTTP Error Audit
- How to fix a 404 error using a 301 redirect
- When to use 410 Gone instead of 404
- How to fix 500 server errors
1 What are HTTP errors?
When a browser or Google visits a page on your site, your server sends back a three-digit response code. A 200 means everything is fine. A 404 means the page does not exist. A 500 means something broke on your server.
| Code | Meaning | SEO impact |
|---|---|---|
| 404 Not Found | Page does not exist | Wastes crawl budget, may deindex page |
| 410 Gone | Page permanently deleted | Google removes it faster than 404 |
| 403 Forbidden | Access denied | Page cannot be indexed |
| 500 Server Error | Something crashed on your server | Page may be deindexed if persistent |
| 503 Unavailable | Server overloaded | Google retries — persistent = deindex risk |
2 How to find all errors on your site
- 1 Open the HTTP Error Audit Go to performance-tools.html#http-error-audit. Choose your scan size — 10 pages is enough for a small site, 50 pages for most business sites.
- 2 Enter your homepage URL and run the scan The crawler starts at your homepage, follows every internal link, and records the HTTP status of each page it visits. Results appear as the crawl progresses.
- 3 Filter by 4xx errors first Click the "4xx Errors" filter to see only broken pages. The "Found on" column shows which page linked to the broken URL — so you know exactly where to remove or update the link.
- 4 Then check 5xx errors 5xx errors are server-side problems. If you see these, check your server error logs immediately — they indicate something is broken on your hosting or application.
3 How to fix a 404 error
For each 404 you find, you have three options:
- 1 Set up a 301 redirect If the page has moved or been replaced, redirect the old URL to the new one permanently. A 301 redirect passes the old page's authority to the new destination. In WordPress, use the Redirection plugin. In other systems, add the redirect to your .htaccess file or NGINX config.
- 2 Return a 410 Gone If the page is permanently deleted and has no replacement, return a 410 status code. This tells Google to remove the URL from its index immediately — faster than a 404.
- 3 Update or remove the linking page The "Found on" column in the audit shows which page linked to the broken URL. Go to that page and either update the link to the correct URL or remove it entirely.
After fixing: Run the HTTP Error Audit again to confirm the errors are resolved. Check the Redirects filter to make sure your 301 redirects are working and returning 200 at the destination.