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Security Critical impact Medium depends on the cause (minutes to hours)

HTTP status code and availability

The page must return a 200 code and be reliably available.

What it is

On every load the server returns a status code: 200 = OK, 301/302 = redirect, 404 = not found, 5xx = server error. Search engines use it to decide whether to index a page.

Why it matters

Google drops pages returning 4xx/5xx from its index and you lose traffic to them. Excessive redirects slow down loading and dilute "link juice". Unstable availability (occasional 5xx) undermines both trust and crawl budget.

How to do it

  1. 1Verify that important pages return 200 directly, without a redirect chain.
  2. 2Find and fix 404s on pages that should exist (typos in links, deleted content → 301 to a replacement).
  3. 3Address recurring 5xx errors — typically an application bug, exhausted memory, or an overloaded server.
  4. 4Shorten redirect chains to a single hop at most.

Conclusion

A stable 200 code on key pages is a prerequisite for indexing. Treat 5xx as an emergency, and 404s on valuable URLs as a traffic leak. Regularly check logs and Search Console (Coverage) to catch errors before Google does.

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