Which redirect

[Ryan L]

We acquired a company and the site that goes along with it.

In webmaster tools it shows a ton (1/20th of all links) of dead links.

Should I use a 301 or 404, if redirection via a 301 I will try to redirect to the best fit page but all else fail to the homepage?

note: we are trying to evaluate the linkpop of the link sender and notify them of changes but in many cases they are scraper sites I think. Is this even worth my time?

[AussieWebmaster]

yes do 301s... it is just cleaner and stops pr leaks

[Ryan L]

Any issues with google regarding redirects on pages that might not have ever existed (ie misspelled urls on external sites)?

Does google see any of these redirects as suspect or grey/black hat?

If the links are from a scraper site ie driver directory...could they do more harm than good?

Being that I have custom error pages, when should I let them handle vs redirects?

Thanks for any answers you may provide!

[AussieWebmaster]

301s are ok ny google... set your 404 to 301 to homepage

[Ryan L]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

301s are ok ny google... set your 404 to 301 to homepage

in addition to or instead of 301'ng from unfound pages?

Sorry if I am talking in circles this is all kind of new to me.

[AussieWebmaster]

unfound pages could be anything.... if not found they go to your 404 page... so redirect 404 and all juice goes to where that points...

[Ryan L]

just to be clear

instead of putting redirects on the individual pages that show in "webmaster tools>web crawl> not found" you think I would be better off leaving the blanket 404 and 301-ing all 404s to the homepage?

[AussieWebmaster]

you can do the ones you know direct but set up any unknown through the 404... each works but the specific gets you to pass deeper

[jimbeetle]

AW, are you really sure you want to 301 the 404 to the home page? Doing it that way you can never return a 404.

[Ryan L]

Jim whats your suggestion? 301's for the unfound pages and leave the 404 alone?

[AussieWebmaster]

true and I do get annoyed of 404s that create that endless loop but checking all on page links is important and stops that - plus you can maybe exclude certain subdirectories

[jimbeetle]

Ryan, I'd simply 301 the pages that have good backlinks to the "best fit" pages and let it go at that. I wouldn't worry about any backlinks from scraper sites as they're probably not worth the effort, let them return a 404.