A Pile of 404 Errors in Your Backend Got You Panicking? Google Says That's Actually a Good Sign!

Hi everyone, this is Neo.

If you run an overseas independent site — B2B or B2C — you’ve probably been spooked at least once by something in Google Search Console: hundreds or even thousands of 404 Not Found errors staring back at you from the backend.

Seeing a screen full of “errors,” most people’s first reaction is: “Oh no, is my site bugged?” “Are these dead pages wasting my crawl budget?” “Is my SEO ranking about to tank?”

Relax! Recently, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller answered a webmaster’s question with a response most people didn’t see coming: Google repeatedly crawling your 404 pages isn’t a bad thing — it’s actually a positive signal!

Today, Neo is going to help you fully understand the truth about 404s — and exactly how we independent site sellers should handle them.

1. Breaking the Myth: Does a 404 Really Mean Your Site Is “Broken”?

For years, the 404 status code has been casually labeled the “404 Error.” And that word “error” has sent countless SEOs and site owners into a panic, making them feel like they have to “fix” it.

But here’s the thing: according to official web standards, the formal name is 404 Not Found.

It’s nothing more than a status code the server sends in response to a browser or crawler request. Its meaning is refreshingly simple: “The page you asked me for isn’t here.”

The only thing that’s “wrong” is the request itself — not your website. In most cases, a page disappears for perfectly legitimate business reasons (say, a seasonal product being delisted on a B2C site, or an outdated trade-show news item being removed from a B2B site).

Neo’s take: Think of 404s as normal metabolism. It’s like a physical store: a product sells out and gets taken off the shelf, a customer asks about it, and the clerk says “we don’t have it (404).” That doesn’t mean your store is going out of business — and it doesn’t mean you should drag that customer over to some unrelated shelf either.

2. Do 404s Waste Your Precious “Crawl Budget”?

Not long ago, an anxious webmaster posted on Reddit: they’d noticed in GSC that Googlebot was relentlessly crawling 404 pages that no longer existed — even after they’d removed those pages from their sitemap, Google kept coming back for more.

The webmaster was worried sick: aren’t these repeated dead-end crawls burning through my crawl budget? Will my genuinely valuable pages stop getting indexed?

John Mueller gave a clear answer to exactly this concern:

“These (crawls) don’t cause problems, so I would just let it go. They might be recrawled for a very long time… In a way, this means Google is happy to take more content from your website.”

Yes, you read that right. Googlebot repeatedly coming back to your site “for a stroll” looking for pages that don’t exist means Google has a high level of interest in — and trust in — your content. That’s a very positive signal!

And as for the “crawl budget” worry everyone fixates on — it’s mostly a myth. Mueller has stressed time and again that crawl budget mainly matters for ultra-large sites with millions of pages. For the vast majority of ordinary B2B or B2C independent sites (anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of pages), Google has more than enough computing power — a few 404 pages will never drain your budget and stop new pages from being indexed. If you find new pages aren’t being indexed, it’s almost always a content quality problem, not a technical crawl budget issue.

Neo’s take: A lot of operators burn hours every day “cleaning up” 404 pages to “save budget” — a textbook case of penny-wise and pound-foolish. If your site only has a few thousand products or articles, you don’t need crawl-budget anxiety. Put that energy into writing high-quality blog posts and optimizing product descriptions instead; the returns are far bigger.

3. 404 or 410 (Gone) — Which Should You Use?

When handling dead pages, there’s another common status code besides 404: 410 Gone.

Per the official standard, 404 only means “not found right now” (it might come back later), while 410 explicitly tells search engines: “This page has been permanently deleted and will never return — please clean up any links to it.”

Naturally, perfectionist SEOs ask: since the page is gone anyway, shouldn’t I convert all my 404s to 410s?

Based on how Google actually operates: don’t bother.

Google employees have said 410 responses can clear pages from the index “slightly faster,” but in practice, Google treats 404 and 410 almost identically.

Why? Because Google knows webmasters all too well! Former Google engineer Matt Cutts once explained that webmasters frequently “shoot themselves in the foot” — accidentally deleting important pages, temporary site outages, misconfigurations. To avoid collateral damage, Google’s systems have built-in safeguards. Even if you return a 404 or a 410, Googlebot will still drop by from time to time to double-check: “Is this page really gone? Could it possibly come back?”

Neo’s take: In short, 404 and 410 make no meaningful difference from an SEO standpoint. If your platform (Shopify, WordPress, etc.) handles dead pages as 404 by default, just leave it — there’s zero need to burn time and money getting a developer to switch them to 410.

4. How Independent Site Sellers Should Actually Handle Dead Pages

So if 404s are no big deal, can we just completely sit back and relax? Of course not. Handle it case by case:

  1. Intentionally deleted pages (leave them alone, keep the 404): For example, a product you’ve stopped manufacturing (discontinued products), or an outdated promo article you’ve removed. Letting it 404 is the correct move — Google recommends exactly this.

  2. Changed URLs or pages with replacements (use a 301 redirect): If you moved a product URL from domain.com/shoes to domain.com/red-shoes, or an old model was discontinued but a perfect new one exists, you must set up a 301 redirect (permanent redirect) to seamlessly pass the original traffic and SEO equity to the new page.

  3. Unexpected 404s (fix them immediately): If a site structure change turned a currently best-selling core product page — or a high-traffic blog post — into a 404, that’s a genuine disaster! Make a habit of auditing GSC regularly to catch and fix these “accidental casualties.”

Summary

Let me wrap up today’s key takeaways:

  • 404s are normal: A 404 status code simply means the page wasn’t found. It does not mean your site is broken or needs “emergency repairs.”
  • It’s a positive signal: Googlebot repeatedly crawling your 404 pages means Google likes your site and is hungry for your content.
  • Stop scaring yourself with “crawl budget”: Unless your independent site has millions of pages, don’t obsess over crawl budget. 404s won’t exhaust your allowance.
  • Go with the flow: Pages that are genuinely gone — let them rest in peace as 404s; URLs that changed — use 301 redirects.

Independent site SEO is a game of steady nerves. Don’t let backend data fluctuations or status codes sell you anxiety. Get back to the fundamentals of business — consistently delivering high-quality content and products — and that’s the real winning move.