401
4xxSEO: negativeRFC 9110
HTTP 401 Unauthorized
Authentication is required. Google cannot crawl pages behind a login.
Indexable by Google
No
Link equity passed
No
SEO Impact
Negative
Category
4XX
SEO Impact
A 401 means Google cannot access this page and will not index it. This is appropriate for private pages behind authentication. However, if public pages accidentally return 401 (e.g., due to misconfigured middleware), they will disappear from Google's index. Monitor Search Console for unexpected 401 errors. The WWW-Authenticate header specifies the authentication scheme.
When to Use 401
Pages or API endpoints that require authentication. Always include a WWW-Authenticate response header.
HTTP Response Example
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized WWW-Authenticate: Bearer realm="example.com"
Test with cURL
$ curl -I https://example.com/dashboard