Page answers with a 4xx client error
What it is
The page answers with a 4xx status code, most often 404 (Not Found) or 410 (Gone): the server says there is nothing at this address. Usually the page was deleted, or moved without a redirect, while your sitemap or links still send people and crawlers to the old URL.
Why it matters
Google does not index URLs that answer 4xx and removes those already in its index, so whatever traffic the page earned stops. Visitors who follow a link to it hit an error, and links from other sites now lead to an error. AI assistants that fetch the URL or rely on a search index are then likely to find nothing of yours to cite there.
How Asky checks it
Asky requests each page and follows redirects. A 404 that returns an HTML page is read: under 200 words of visible text it is reported here, with 200 or more as a 404 page that has content. Any other 4xx, or a 404 without an HTML body, marks the page as removed at the first attempt and is reported here with its status. Either way the page gets no other finding: URL, title, content and other on-page checks are skipped. A 401 or 403 counts as a block, not a removal, toward the AskyBot blocked issue; 408 and 429 are treated as temporary and retried. This judges the page itself; links to it are reported as broken internal links.
Reported as an error with high severity.
How to fix it
- Confirm the status in your browser’s developer tools (Network tab) or with an HTTP status checker, and note where the URL is listed: your sitemap, a menu, or links in your content.
- If the page should exist, restore it or fix its route so it answers 200. In Webflow, WordPress or Sanity this often means publishing it again or putting back its old slug.
- If the content moved, redirect the old URL to the new page with a 301. Then list the new URL in your sitemap in place of the old one and point internal links straight at it, so neither keeps pointing at the redirect.
- If the page is gone for good, keep the 404 or answer 410, take it out of your sitemap and remove or update the links to it.
- To leave it as it is: if the page was removed on purpose and nothing on your site still lists or links to it, mark the issue resolved.
Example
https://example.com/blog/old-pricing-guide was replaced by a new article, but the sitemap still lists it:
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" https://example.com/blog/old-pricing-guide
# 404 before the fix; 301 to /blog/pricing-guide after it