How to Find and Fix 404 Errors on Your Framer Site

Understanding 404 Errors in Framer

A 404 error occurs when a visitor or search engine crawler requests a URL that your server cannot find. The server responds with HTTP status code 404, Not Found. This is the technically correct behavior: it tells the requesting client, clearly and unambiguously, that nothing exists at this address.

404 errors damage SEO through three distinct mechanisms. First, every time Googlebot visits a broken URL, that request consumes crawl budget. Crawl budget is finite, Google allocates a certain number of requests to your site per day based on your site's authority and server health. Wasting budget on broken URLs means Google visits fewer of your real, valuable pages. For small Framer sites this matters less, but for sites with hundreds of CMS collection items, 404 waste adds up fast.

Second, backlinks pointing to deleted or moved pages return 404 errors. All of the link equity that third-party sites pass through those links goes nowhere. A 301 redirect captures that equity and passes it to the destination page. A 404 destroys it entirely.

Third, visitors who land on a broken page from a search result bounce immediately. High bounce rates on 404 pages signal to Google that your site is failing to deliver value, which is an indirect negative signal over time.

The Framer Soft 404 Problem

Here is where Framer has a specific, well-documented issue that most tutorials ignore: Framer's 404 page has historically returned an HTTP 202 status code instead of 404.

HTTP 202 means "Accepted", it is a success response. So when Google crawls a missing page on a Framer site, the server says "everything is fine, the request was accepted," and returns what is actually an empty page. Google sees a 202 response with thin content and classifies the URL as a soft 404. The page stays in Google's index but is treated as low-quality content.

Critical Issue

Soft 404s are worse than real 404s from an SEO perspective. Real 404s tell Google to remove the URL from the index. Soft 404s leave low-value URLs in the index, diluting your site's overall quality signal. If you have a Framer site that predates this being widely known, check your Google Search Console Coverage report for "Crawled, currently not indexed" and "Excluded" entries, these often include soft 404s.

To verify your Framer site's 404 behavior, navigate to a non-existent URL on your live site (something like yourdomain.com/this-page-does-not-exist) and use a header-checking tool like httpstatus.io to inspect the actual HTTP response code. If it returns anything other than 404, your site has the soft 404 problem.

How to Create a Proper 404 Page in Framer

Framer provides two methods for creating a 404 page. The first is to create a new page and name it exactly /404 in the URL path field. The second is to use the dedicated 404 page type available in the page settings panel, which Framer introduced to give designers a more intentional way to designate the error page.

Your custom 404 page should accomplish several things: clearly communicate that the page was not found, preserve your brand design, offer useful navigation options (a search bar, links to popular content, a link to the homepage), and set the right tone, helpful rather than apologetic.

Even with a beautifully designed 404 page, you should verify that Framer is returning the correct HTTP 404 status code after publishing. This is a technical detail that sits at the server level, not the design level, and it is worth confirming with a header inspector.

Framer's Native 404 Tracking (August 2025 Update)

On August 20, 2025, Framer shipped a meaningful update to its analytics dashboard: native 404 tracking. For the first time, Framer site owners could see which URLs were returning 404 errors directly inside the Framer analytics interface, without needing to export data from Google Search Console or set up external monitoring.

The feature surfaces broken URLs as a dedicated report section within the Framer Analytics dashboard. When a visitor hits a 404 on your site, the URL gets logged and aggregated. Over time, you build up a list of broken paths sorted by frequency.

The Redirect Pre-Fill Workflow

The most practically useful part of Framer's native 404 tracking is the redirect pre-fill workflow. When you click on a broken URL in the analytics 404 report, Framer pre-populates the redirect manager form with that URL as the source. You then only need to specify the destination URL and publish. This removes a significant amount of manual copying and pasting when working through a backlog of broken links.

For Framer sites that are actively maintained and where the team is already inside Framer Analytics regularly, this is a genuinely useful addition to the native toolkit.

Limitations of Framer's Native 404 Tracking

However, Framer's native 404 tracking has meaningful gaps that matter for serious SEO management:

• No user agent data. You cannot tell whether the broken URL was hit by a human visitor, Googlebot, Bingbot, or a scraper. This distinction is critical, a 404 that Googlebot is hitting repeatedly is far more urgent than one hit by a random crawler.

• No per-URL hit count. The analytics view shows you which URLs are broken, but does not provide the granular hit counts needed to prioritize which URLs to fix first.

• No last-hit timestamp per URL. You cannot see whether a broken URL is being actively crawled right now or was last hit six months ago.

• No full URI capture. Query strings and fragment identifiers may not be fully preserved in the analytics view, which matters for sites with complex URL structures.

• Tied to the analytics reporting window. Data is scoped to the period your analytics window covers. There is no persistent, always-on monitoring outside of what the analytics session captures.

• No continuous monitoring script. Framer Analytics processes traffic after the fact. There is no dedicated monitoring script that watches for 404 events independently of the main analytics pipeline.

For sites where SEO is mission-critical, agencies, SaaS marketing sites, content-heavy blogs, these gaps make Framer's native 404 tracking a starting point rather than a complete solution.

Framer's Redirect Manager

Framer's redirect manager lives inside Site Settings under the Redirects tab. It is available on the Framer Pro plan and allows you to manage URL redirects directly from the Framer interface without writing any server configuration code.

Adding Redirects

Each redirect rule consists of an Old URL (the source path that will return a redirect response) and a New URL (the destination path). You can use either relative paths (starting with /) or full absolute URLs for the destination. Framer applies redirects before the request reaches the page renderer, so they are server-side redirects, exactly the kind that Google respects and uses to transfer link equity.

Redirects in Framer are 301 redirects by default. A 301 (Moved Permanently) tells Google that the original URL has moved to the new destination and that the destination should inherit the original URL's ranking signals. This is the correct redirect type for SEO purposes in nearly all cases. Use 302 (Moved Temporarily) only when a redirect is genuinely short-term, for instance, during a site relaunch preview period.

Wildcard Redirects

Framer supports wildcard patterns using the asterisk (*) character. Wildcards match any characters in the URL path at the position where they appear. This is especially powerful for two common scenarios:

• Section renames: If you rename /blog to /articles, a single rule like /blog/* to /articles/* handles every post under the old path automatically.

• Legacy subdirectory redirects: When migrating a site that had a path prefix (like /v1/* or /old-site/*), a single wildcard rule avoids the need to create individual rules for every page.

Redirect Rule Order and Drag-and-Drop Reordering

Framer evaluates redirect rules in order from top to bottom. When a URL matches multiple rules, the first matching rule wins. This means rule order matters significantly when you have both specific and wildcard rules.

Always put your most specific rules above your wildcard rules. If you have a specific redirect for /blog/getting-started and a wildcard rule for /blog/*, place the specific rule first. Otherwise the wildcard catches the URL before the specific rule gets a chance to evaluate.

Framer supports drag-and-drop reordering of redirect rules, which makes this ordering maintenance straightforward. As your redirect list grows, periodic review of rule order is good maintenance hygiene.

The 2,500-Rule Limit

Framer supports a maximum of 2,500 redirect rules. For most Framer sites, this is more than enough. However, for larger sites that have undergone multiple domain migrations, major navigation restructuring, or content audits that resulted in hundreds of deletions, it is possible to approach this limit. If you find yourself near the limit, wildcards are your best tool for consolidation, a single well-designed wildcard rule can replace dozens of individual rules.

Pro Tip

Before adding redirects for deleted CMS collection items, check whether those items were linked from other pages on your site. If they were, update the internal links to point to the correct existing pages first. This reduces the total number of redirects you need to maintain long-term.

Advanced 404 Monitoring with RankFrame

RankFrame's 404 Monitor addresses the gaps in Framer's native 404 tracking with a purpose-built monitoring system that runs as a continuous script installed directly on your site. This script captures 404 events independently of Framer's analytics pipeline, logging every broken URL request with the full detail needed to prioritize and act.

What the 404 Monitor Captures

Every 404 event logged by RankFrame includes four pieces of data that Framer's native tracking does not provide together:

The dashboard also surfaces two summary statistics: Total 404 Errors (cumulative event count across all broken URLs) and Unique Routes (number of distinct broken URL paths). The ratio between these two numbers tells you a lot, a high total with few unique routes usually means a small number of broken URLs are being hammered repeatedly, which is a strong signal that those URLs need immediate redirects.

The Continuous Monitoring Advantage

Because RankFrame's 404 Monitor uses a script installed on your live site rather than relying on analytics session data, it captures errors continuously, even from users or bots that might not be counted in analytics (for instance, visitors who have ad blockers or analytics blockers enabled, or headless crawlers that do not run JavaScript). This persistent monitoring means your 404 data is always current and always accumulating, regardless of your analytics reporting window.

Exception Routes: Whitelisting Intentional Paths

Not every 404 in your monitor needs fixing. Some paths are intentionally expected to return error responses, for example, /404 itself (the 404 page), catch-all API routes, or third-party integration endpoints. If these paths appear in your 404 Monitor, they create noise that makes it harder to spot the real problems.

RankFrame's Exception Routes feature lets you define URL patterns that should be excluded from the monitor. Add a pattern once, and matching URLs will stop appearing in the monitor going forward. This keeps your 404 Monitor focused on actionable errors rather than expected non-200 responses.

How RankFrame 404 Monitor Compares to Framer Analytics

How to Fix 404 Errors: A Step-by-Step Workflow

A systematic approach to 404 remediation ensures you fix the most impactful errors first without missing anything. Here is the workflow we recommend for Framer sites using RankFrame.

1. Run an audit and check your 404 monitor

   Open RankFrame's 404 Monitor tab to see all recorded broken URLs. If you have not yet installed the monitoring script, do that first and allow at least 24 hours for data to accumulate. Also check Google Search Console's Coverage report for "Not found (404)" entries, GSC data catches errors that Googlebot found during its crawls, which may differ from what your visitors are hitting.

2. Identify high-hit 404s first

   Sort RankFrame's 404 Monitor by Hits (descending). The URLs at the top of the list are causing the most crawl waste and user friction. Cross-reference the User Agent column, a URL that Googlebot is hitting hundreds of times is your highest priority regardless of the total visitor count.

3. Determine whether the page was moved or deleted

   For each high-priority broken URL, investigate the cause. Check your Framer pages list for the old path. Look at your CMS collections for deleted or renamed items. Check your Git history or Framer version history if available. Understanding why the 404 exists determines the right fix: a moved page gets a 301 redirect to its new location; a genuinely deleted page gets a redirect to the closest relevant section or the homepage.

4. Create redirects in Framer's redirect manager

   Go to Site Settings > Redirects in Framer. Add the broken URL as the source and the correct destination as the target. Use wildcard rules where multiple broken URLs share a common path prefix, one wildcard rule is more maintainable than twenty individual rules. Remember to place specific rules above wildcard rules in the list order.

5. Add intentional paths to Exception Routes

   After working through your redirect list, review what remains in the 404 Monitor. For any URL that is expected to return a non-200 status (the 404 page itself, catch-all API routes, third-party integration paths), add it to RankFrame's Exception Routes. This keeps your monitor clean for ongoing use.

6. Verify fixes with the 404 monitor

   After publishing your redirects, monitor the previously broken routes over the next few days. A properly implemented redirect will cause Googlebot to stop revisiting the old URL. In RankFrame's monitor, you will see the hit count for those URLs plateau and eventually receive no new entries. If a URL continues accumulating hits after a redirect, the redirect rule may have a syntax error or ordering conflict, investigate the redirect manager for issues.

After Fixing

Once you have resolved your major 404 errors, submit the affected URLs to Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool and request re-indexing. This prompts Google to re-crawl those URLs sooner than the standard crawl schedule, which speeds up the recovery of any lost link equity.

Prioritization Framework

When you have a long list of 404 errors, use this prioritization framework to sequence your work: