What a 200 really tells you
A 200 OK says the server found the resource and is returning its content. It says nothing about quality: a soft 404, a duplicate or an empty template can all answer 200. Treat the status as the entry ticket, not the verdict.
Where 200s matter for SEO
- Canonical URLs must return 200 — canonicals pointing at redirects or 404s waste crawl budget and dilute signals.
- Pages blocked from indexing still should return 200 to crawlers unless removal is intentional.
- XML sitemaps must list only 200 URLs: every redirect or error inside a sitemap is a crawl-budget leak search engines report on.
How to audit it
Crawl the site and group URLs by status code. Compare the 200 set against the sitemap, against internal links and against canonical targets. The interesting findings are almost never the 200s themselves — they are the pages that should be 200 but are not, and the 200s that should have been something else.
SpiderHead groups every crawled URL by response code and flags sitemap entries that do not return 200.
FAQ
Can a page return 200 and still be excluded from search?
Yes. A 200 only means the content was served. Noindex directives, canonicals pointing elsewhere, thin content or duplicate clustering can all keep a 200 page out of the index.
Should redirects in a sitemap be replaced with their 200 targets?
Yes. A sitemap should list final, canonical, 200-answering URLs. Redirects and errors in a sitemap are treated as sitemap quality issues by search engines.