How to return a real 404 with a recoverable body on Wix

Wix gets the status code right and leaves the page empty. Request a URL that does not exist on a Wix site and you get a genuine 404, but the body is a script-built shell with no text and no links in the HTML. A browser fills it in. A crawler or agent that does not run scripts finds nothing to follow. This guide shows what nine live Wix sites return, how to add a 404 page with real links in the Editor, and the redirect habit that quietly turns good 404s into soft ones. Checked on 15 October 2026.

Quick summary

Fastest route: run npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com and read E1, Correct 404 handling (Discoverability). The by-hand check is in Step 4.

What the default Wix 404 actually is

I requested a made-up path on nine Wix sites: five on wixsite.com addresses and four on custom domains. All nine answered 404 text/html. The response was between 2,204 and 2,505 bytes, carried <meta name="robots" content="noindex">, and had the title "404 Error: Page Not Found". Inside the body there is one <div id="root"></div> and a script that draws the message. There were zero <a> tags in any of them.

So the status is correct, and RFC 9110 defines 404 as exactly this signal. AIScan scored one of those sites (a Wix manufacturer's site) as a pass on E1, with the evidence line HTTP 404, 2206 bytes. What it cannot give a script-less reader is a way out. E1 also looks at the body: AIScan's E1 description says full credit needs a body that names the site and links somewhere useful.

None of the nine sites had a custom 404 page, so I could not measure one. Step 1 builds it, and Step 4 tells you what to look for.

Step 1: Add a 404 page with links

Per Wix's own help article, a custom 404 page needs a premium plan. In the Editor:

1. Click Pages & Menu on the left.
2. Click Add Menu Item at the bottom of the panel.
3. Click New Page, then (404) Error Page.
4. Hover a template, click Add Page.
5. Edit the text, add your site menu, and add links to the sections visitors look for.
6. Click Publish.

Wix notes that you can change the page title in Page Settings, but the page URL always contains error404. Write the sentence in your own words and name the site: "This page is not on example.com. Try the pricing page, the blog or the contact page." Use text links, not only buttons or an image.

Step 2: Do not redirect dead URLs to the homepage

The Wix URL Redirect Manager creates 301 redirects, and it is easy to point every retired URL at /. Google's status code guidance says a 200 whose content suggests an error or an empty page shows up in Search Console as a soft 404. A homepage served for a retired product URL is that pattern from the reader's side. Redirect an old URL to its closest replacement, and when there is none, leave it to 404.

Limits from Wix's redirect article:

• 301 redirects only work with a custom domain. A free wixsite.com address cannot have them.
• You cannot create a redirect whose source is your homepage.
• A site can hold at most 5,000 redirects.
• Wix creates a redirect automatically when you change an Editor page slug. Blog pages are the exception: change a blog slug and you must add the 301 yourself, or the old URL 404s.

Step 3: Check the layers in front of Wix

If you put a CDN or proxy in front of a custom domain, it can replace a 404 with a friendly 200. Test the live domain, not only the Wix preview.

Step 4: Verify the fix

With AIScan (default): run npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com, open Discoverability and find E1, Correct 404 handling. It reads pass when the status is 404. Watch the body evidence too.

By hand with curl:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{content_type}\n' https://yoursite.com/this-page-does-not-exist-9f3a
curl -s https://yoursite.com/this-page-does-not-exist-9f3a | grep -o '<a ' | wc -l

Expected: 404 text/html, then a link count above zero. On the default Wix page I measured 0. If the first line prints 200 after you add your page, the status is wrong, and Wix support is the next stop. I found no live Wix site with a custom page to measure, so this command is the test, not my word.

Edge cases

• A redirect conflict can arise when a page and a redirect claim the same URL. Wix's redirect article has a section on resolving it.
• Deleted pages return the 404 page, which is correct. Do not redirect them out of habit.

Next step

Run the scan, check E1 on your own domain, and read the rest of the series in AIScan's guides. Related reading: why soft 404s mislead agents, the Webflow version of this fix, AI readiness setup on Wix, and the Discoverability checks.