How to return HTTP 404 when no search results found?

Question

When user search and there is no results found wordpress still return 200 OK. I want to change it to 404 Not Found. Is it possible to return 404 Not Found header in search.php? If yes, how to do that?.

Thanks.

Answer 1

It's bad practice to do so purely because the Search Results page was found it just returned no results.

A 404 would be used if the search page didn't exist.