What does the 40102 error mean?

When working with the DataForSEO SERP API, you may receive a task with a 40102 status code that comes with the following message:

{
  "status_code": 40102,
  "status_message": "No Search Results."
}

This error indicates that no results matching your request have been found. In this article, we explain what causes the 40102 No Search Results error, which request types most often return it, and why such requests may still incur an associated cost.

What causes the 40102 error?

The 40102 No Search Results error means that the request was successfully submitted to the search engine and processed, but it returned no results for the specified parameters.

There are several common reasons for this:

1. The keyword has no results for the specified parameters. A keyword that returns results in one location or language may return none in another. Narrow combinations of keyword, location_code, language_code, and device can produce an empty SERP even when the same keyword works elsewhere.

2. The keyword is overly specific or contains rare terms. Very long, highly specific queries, misspellings, or random character strings may not match any indexed content.

3. The request uses a search operator that is not supported. Certain advanced search operators may not be supported by our SERP API endpoints. The most common case is the use of the site: operator in Bing Organic SERP API endpoints, described in the section below.

Why do site: requests to Bing SERP endpoints return the 40102 error?

The site: search operator is not supported in Bing Organic SERP API endpoints due to the following reason.

When a site: query is submitted to Bing, the search engine consistently returns a CAPTCHA challenge instead of a results page.

The CAPTCHA requires manual verification and cannot be resolved automatically, which means the SERP data cannot be collected.

Thus, requests containing the site: operator sent to Bing Organic SERP API endpoints return the 40102 error instead of SERP data. This applies to all Bing Organic SERP API endpoints and to both the Standard and Live methods.

If you need to retrieve the pages of a specific domain, we recommend using the endpoints designed for that purpose, such as the Domain Pages endpoint of the Backlinks API.

Why is a request with the 40102 error still billable?

A 40102 response does not mean that the request failed to reach the search engine.

It indicates that the request was successfully submitted for processing and that DataForSEO used the necessary infrastructure and resources to retrieve the requested SERP data. The search engine was reached and returned a response, but it contained no results matching the specified parameters.

Because processing resources have already been used, the request is billable even though no SERP items were returned.

Example of an API response returning the 40102 error

{
  "version": "0.1.20260806",
  "status_code": 20000,
  "status_message": "Ok.",
  "time": "4.1734 sec.",
  "cost": 0.002,
  "tasks_count": 1,
  "tasks_error": 0,
  "tasks": [
    {
      "id": "08131413-1535-0139-0000-a65c7729ed43",
      "status_code": 40102,
      "status_message": "No Search Results.",
      "time": "3.8376 sec.",
      "cost": 0.002,
      "result_count": 1,
      "path": [
        "v3",
        "serp",
        "bing",
        "organic",
        "live",
        "advanced"
      ],
      "data": {
        "api": "serp",
        "function": "live",
        "se": "bing",
        "se_type": "organic",
        "language_code": "en",
        "location_code": "2840",
        "keyword": "site:youreachiteach.com",
        "device": "desktop",
        "os": "windows"
      },
      "result": [
        {
          "keyword": "site:youreachiteach.com",
          "type": "organic",
          "se_domain": "bing.com",
          "location_code": 2840,
          "language_code": "en",
          "check_url": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ayoureachiteach.com&form=QBLH",
          "datetime": "2026-08-13 14:13:34 +00:00",
          "spell": null,
          "refinement_chips": null,
          "item_types": null,
          "se_results_count": 0,
          "pages_count": 1,
          "items_count": 0,
          "items": null
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Note that a task returning 40102 still includes a result array with the request metadata, such as keyword, check_url, and datetime. However, se_results_count and items_count equal 0, and the items array equals null.

See the Errors endpoint in our documentation for the full list of DataForSEO’s internal status codes and messages.