Googlebot response-code handling — 200 proceeds, 3xx is followed (up to a chain limit), 4xx (incl. 410) is dropped without wasting crawl budget, 5xx slows or pauses crawl, soft-404 confuses everything

Claim: Per Google's documentation, Googlebot handles HTTP response codes as follows:

• 200 — eligible to proceed to rendering/indexing.
• 3xx — followed (Google follows redirect chains up to a limit; long chains waste resources).
• 4xx (incl. 410) — dropped from crawl. Google explicitly notes 4xx do not "waste" crawl budget. 404/410 are the clean way to remove content.
• 5xx / timeouts — Google slows or pauses crawling to avoid overloading the server; sustained 5xx can reduce crawl rate site-wide.
• Soft 404s (200 status on a "not found" page) — confuse the crawler and waste resources; Google advises eliminating them.

Faster server response can let Google crawl more — but Google stresses that simply speeding up low-quality pages won't increase crawling.

Source: Google Search Central documentation.

Confidence: High.

Caveat: Soft-404 is the silent killer on WordPress sites — empty category pages, "no results found" search pages returning 200 — and is a frequent Candid-audit finding.