200 OK meaning in English

200 OK

Status

200 OK

What is a 200 OK HTTP response?

200 OK is the standard/default HTTP response provided when a resource is successfully returned by a web server without any errors.

A 200 would be the correct response to receive from a server if there is no error, no redirection is required, and the resource requested is not already stored in the browser cache.

What type of HTTP status is a 200?

A 200 is in the 2xx class of status codes which are success based.

Other status codes in this class include 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, and 228.

Example 200 response

A series of resources loading with 200 success response codes

When should a 200 response be used?

A web-page or resource should respond with a 200 success code when everything has loaded successfully and there are no serious errors or redirection.

Does a 200 HTTP status affect SEO?

Generally speaking a 200 is the ideal status code - assuming that a user or search engine bot has arrived in the correct place and there are no errors.

If the resource no longer exists then a 404 or 410 status code would be more appropriate.

Specification

The 200 (OK) status code indicates that the request has succeeded.

The payload sent in a 200 response depends on the request method.
For the methods defined by this specification, the intended meaning of the payload can be summarized as:

GET a representation of the target resource;

HEAD the same representation as GET, but without the representation data;

POST a representation of the status of, or results obtained from, the action;

PUT, DELETE a representation of the status of the action;

OPTIONS a representation of the communications options;

TRACE a representation of the request message as received by the end server.

Aside from responses to CONNECT, a 200 response always has a payload, though an origin server MAY generate a payload body of zero length.

If no payload is desired, an origin server ought to send 204 (No Content) instead. For CONNECT, no payload is allowed because the successful result is a tunnel, which begins immediately after the 200 response header section.

A 200 response is cacheable by default; i.e., unless otherwise indicated by the method definition or explicit cache controls (see Section 4.2.2 of [RFC7234]).

Title

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content

Date

June 2014

Citation URL

https://www.searchcandy.uk/seo/seo-glossary/http-200/

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