diff --git a/plugins/search-backend-module-elasticsearch/src/engines/ElasticSearchSearchEngine.ts b/plugins/search-backend-module-elasticsearch/src/engines/ElasticSearchSearchEngine.ts
index 8f321a266c..1eb32c882d 100644
--- a/plugins/search-backend-module-elasticsearch/src/engines/ElasticSearchSearchEngine.ts
+++ b/plugins/search-backend-module-elasticsearch/src/engines/ElasticSearchSearchEngine.ts
@@ -362,13 +362,16 @@ export class ElasticSearchSearchEngine implements SearchEngine {
         nextPageCursor,
         previousPageCursor,
       };
-    } catch (e) {
-      if (e.meta.body.error.type === 'index_not_found_exception') {
-        throw new MissingIndexError(`Missing index for ${queryIndices}`, e);
+    } catch (error) {
+      if (error.meta.body.error.type === 'index_not_found_exception') {
+        throw new MissingIndexError(
+          `Missing index for ${queryIndices}. This means there are no documents to search through.`,
+          error,
+        );
       }
       this.logger.error(
         `Failed to query documents for indices ${queryIndices}`,
-        e,
+        error,
       );
       return Promise.reject({ results: [] });
     }
diff --git a/plugins/search-backend-node/api-report.md b/plugins/search-backend-node/api-report.md
index 63273d7514..ff9480c19d 100644
--- a/plugins/search-backend-node/api-report.md
+++ b/plugins/search-backend-node/api-report.md
@@ -6,7 +6,6 @@
 /// <reference types="node" />
 
 import { Config } from '@backstage/config';
-import { CustomErrorBase } from '@backstage/errors';
 import { DocumentCollatorFactory } from '@backstage/plugin-search-common';
 import { DocumentDecoratorFactory } from '@backstage/plugin-search-common';
 import { DocumentTypeInfo } from '@backstage/plugin-search-common';
@@ -115,7 +114,10 @@ export class LunrSearchEngineIndexer extends BatchSearchEngineIndexer {
 }
 
 // @public
-export class MissingIndexError extends CustomErrorBase {}
+export class MissingIndexError extends Error {
+  constructor(message?: string, cause?: Error | unknown);
+  readonly cause?: Error | undefined;
+}
 
 // @public
 export class NewlineDelimitedJsonCollatorFactory
diff --git a/plugins/search-backend-node/src/errors.ts b/plugins/search-backend-node/src/errors.ts
index c6128f3f2e..00b168d460 100644
--- a/plugins/search-backend-node/src/errors.ts
+++ b/plugins/search-backend-node/src/errors.ts
@@ -14,10 +14,24 @@
  * limitations under the License.
  */
 
-import { CustomErrorBase } from '@backstage/errors';
+import { isError } from '@backstage/errors';
 
 /**
  *  Failed to query documents for index that does not exist.
  *  @public
  */
-export class MissingIndexError extends CustomErrorBase {}
+export class MissingIndexError extends Error {
+  /**
+   * An inner error that caused this error to be thrown, if any.
+   */
+  readonly cause?: Error | undefined;
+
+  constructor(message?: string, cause?: Error | unknown) {
+    super(message);
+
+    Error.captureStackTrace?.(this, this.constructor);
+
+    this.name = this.constructor.name;
+    this.cause = isError(cause) ? cause : undefined;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/plugins/search-backend/src/service/router.ts b/plugins/search-backend/src/service/router.ts
index c85b3ed797..0fbacb018e 100644
--- a/plugins/search-backend/src/service/router.ts
+++ b/plugins/search-backend/src/service/router.ts
@@ -162,13 +162,7 @@ export async function createRouter(
         res.send(filterResultSet(toSearchResults(resultSet)));
       } catch (error) {
         if (error instanceof MissingIndexError) {
-          res
-            .status(400)
-            .send(
-              `\nNo index found for types: ${
-                query.types ? query.types.join(',') : ''
-              }. This means there are no documents to search through.`,
-            );
+          res.status(400).json(error.message);
         }
 
         throw new Error(