[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #56883: Feeds of non-existent tags and categories displays an empty feed instead of 404

[WordPress Trac]

#56883: Feeds of non-existent tags and categories displays an empty feed instead of
404
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 Reporter:  rafaucau               |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)           |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                 |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Feeds                  |    Version:  6.0.3
 Severity:  normal                 |   Keywords:
  Focuses:  template, performance  |
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 I noticed in Google Search Console that Google often visits feeds of tags
 that no longer exist. It turns out that the RSS feeds still work instead
 of returning a 404.

 Recreating the issue is simple:
 Go to the page of the non-existent tag, e.g. `/tag/asdsdsad/` and append
 `feed/` to the end of the address, eg. `/tag/asdsdsad/feed/`. An empty
 feed will be displayed instead of a 404.

 This should return a 404 so that search engine bots can forget about it
 instead of fetching it every so often.
 I have thousands of such deleted tags on my site. It would be better for
 the environment if the bots didn't waste resources on this.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/56883>
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