Lack of interest Suggestion: 404 redirect to homepage

[ibrian]

404 error pages may make a lot of sense to coders, but they offer the worst possible user experience.

Landing on a 404 page is the best way for a visitor to immediately leave your website.

Landing on a 404 that redirects to the homepage - therefore offering visitors an option to interract with the website they just found - would be a far better user experience.

I know there are properly technical standards, but IMO better to have a quality user experience in this instance. 2c.

 

[dutchbb]

This is not prefered by google.

Best user experience is also to let people know the page does not exist, so a 404 is perfect if you have a custom page that is.

Even better would be an automatic search when an user lands on a 404 page so they can find a relevant thread. The 404 page of xenforo is good, you can go directly to homepage or search form there.

 

[Kirby]

This is not a good idea. If a certain page does not exist, the only correct response is a 404.

 

[ibnesayeed]

Redirection in such cases is not a good idea as it is an abuse of the HTTP response codes and not good for SEO. The last two paragraphs of the Soft 404 errors help page from Google Webmaster's documentation would be useful.