Should I display a 404 error in search results?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

In the google webmasters panel, a bunch of pages popped up with the description "The page with the specified address does not exist, and the server did not return a 404 error code (file not found)". But all these pages are the results of search queries on the site, for which nothing was found. How to be in such a situation? Prohibit indexing of the search page at all, or is it possible to somehow tell Google that these pages contain search results for the site? Giving a 404 error, IMHO, is completely wrong.

Answer 1

From an HTTP point of view, a 404 error is the absence of a resource at a given address. But there is a search engine at the address, that is, there is a resource. So yes, it's logical to give 200.
From an SEO standpoint, I would disable indexing of search results. And also, from the user’s point of view, I would hit on the hands of those who do not do this, because the relevance of such pages is zero, but search engines often “peck” at them.

Answer 2

The correct solution would be to close pages with search results from indexing by mask through the robots.txt file