Title: Hack and soft 404s
Last modified: February 20, 2017

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# Hack and soft 404s

 *  [vicky2](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vicky2/)
 * (@vicky2)
 * [9 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/hack-and-soft-404s/)
 * _[ Moderator note: [moved to Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wheres-my-topic-gone?replies=1&view=all).]_
 * Hi,
    I recently got a Search Console (SC) warning about soft 404s. I already 
   had paid Wordfence installed and still do. There were a couple hundred spammy
   soft 404s.
 * I paid a place to fix the issue. The repair place said all was well, they emptied
   the cache and that the soft 404s “might go away.” That day was the last day a
   soft 404 appeared in SC. The place installed additional security stuff. They 
   were vague about whether the issue was from a hack.
 * My host also looked at the site and said it had been hacked, but that all was
   OK now.
 * But, since then (several days ago), the graph of crawl errors in SC has gone 
   UP instead of down. My rankings have dropped, dramatically in some cases, during
   this time.
 * About 30 mins. ago I marked all the soft 404 pages as fixed in SC, though they
   are still showing.
 * So why are Crawl Errors rising? Does this issue relate to WordPress? I would 
   like my rankings back and to not see all these soft 404s.
 * What can I do? I am trying to again contact the repair place and host but I think
   they have done all they can. I need a more holistic view of what’s going on; 
   running scans isn’t enough. Thanks for any help.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Moderator [James Huff](https://wordpress.org/support/users/macmanx/)
 * (@macmanx)
 * [9 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/hack-and-soft-404s/#post-8828138)
 * The crawl error are rising because the problem pages are gone, but they’re probably
   still indexed or linked to somewhere, so now they’re just landing on hard 404’
   s rather than soft 404’s.
 * It will take some time for that to change, as that portion of the problem is 
   outside of your control.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Hack and soft 404s’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [James Huff](https://wordpress.org/support/users/macmanx/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/hack-and-soft-404s/#post-8828138)
 * Status: not a support question

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