Do 404 pages pass link juice? And best practices...

[Alex-Harford]

Last year Google said bad links to 404 pages wouldn't hurt your site. Could that still be the case in light of recent Google updates to try and combat spammy links and negative SEO?

Can links to 404 pages benefit a website and pass link juice? I'd assume at the very least that any link juice will pass through links FROM the 404 page?

Many websites have great 404 pages that get linked to: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fretardzone.com%2F404 - that was the first of four I checked from the "60 Really Cool...404 Pages" that actually returned the 404 HTTP Status! So apologies if you find the word 'retard' offensive. According to Open Site Explorer it has a decent Page Authority and number of backlinks - but it doesn't show in Google's SERPs.

I'd never do it, but if you have a particularly well-linked to 404 page, is there an argument for giving it 200 OK Status?

Finally, what are the best practices regarding 404s and address bar links?

For example, if
www.examplesite.com/3rwdfs returns a 404 error, should I make that redirect to
www.examplesite.com/404 or leave it as is?

Redirecting to www.examplesite.com/404 might not be user-friendly as people won't be able to correct the URL in the address bar. But if I have a great  404 page that people link to, I don't want links going to loads of random pages do I? Is either way considered best practice?

If I did a 301 redirect I guess it would send the wrong signal to the crawlers? Should I use a 302 redirect, or even a 304 Not Modified redirect?

[TomRayner]

This is a fascinating question.

Regarding your question about 404 pages getting a 200 status. So obviously, Google doesn't index 404 pages, and de-indexed pages do not pass on link juice.  However, like you say, some people and sites link to 404 pages and so, were these ever to go live, you'd imagine it would have some sort of strength/authority.

But how could you practically accomplish this? If you make the 404 page a 200 page, you've now got no 404 page for your website, which could be very bad indeed. So, you'd probably want to substitute that page with a new, fresh 404 page. But if that sits as the 404 page and gets marked as a 404, wouldn't the links become void again?

If you then moved the old 404 to a new page, it loses the links once pointing to it.

The hongkiat webpage is a really clever idea as it takes all those pages and makes a shareable hub, which of course then gets all the links and strength.