Redirect vs 404

Is it a good idea to redirect posts to unrelated pages?

[MayankParmar]

Hi,

I have a news website with thousands of posts that get no traffic. They have had zero traffic in the last 12 months. Some have backlinks from old sources, and I don’t want to lose those links. I can delete some posts that don’t have any backlinks.

I’m unsure whether to redirect or 404 the posts that may have backlinks. For example, I have these articles from 2014:

- Blackberry receives August security update
- Samsung Star Galaxy gets September update

These phones are obsolete, and nobody uses them anymore. I don’t have any relevant posts to redirect them to. What if I redirect hundreds of Samsung's old phone updates posts to the Galaxy S22 Security update post? They are different phones, but they are both from Samsung. Similarly, what if I redirect hundreds of Blackberry posts to the last article about Blackberry (which is about its farewell).

Is this a good strategy or will it hurt me? What about redirecting the posts to the homepage? Or should I 404 them if the redirects are too irrelevant?

[not2easy]

You should not redirect old posts to newer content, it is seen as a soft 404 which is bad for a site. Instead, you could edit the old page with links to show a link to the more current information. If visitors are interested, they can click through to the newer article. If all they wanted to see was the old article, they could see that. Google does not like it when the landing page for an old URL is not that old URL unless it has the same content of the old URL. If the redirect does not supply the old information, it should be up to the visitor to see the new information.

soft 404s can potentially be confusing for your site's visitors

This is why, since 2010 Google shows you "soft 404s" in GSC so you can avoid them. [developers.google.com...]

[lucy24]

If you're deleting content, it would in any case not be a 404. That's what the 410 is for. As a bonus, it makes the Googlebot stop requesting the pages faster. Put some thought into your custom 410 page. It could even have different content depending on what was requested, but at bottom the response is 410, not 301.

Now all you have to do is figure out how to get thousands of URLs into just a few rules, because the 410--unlike the 404--can only be returned manually.

[tangor]

Some stuff (tech news mostly) that has aged past prime needs to disappear IF IT IS THIN CONTENT in the first place. Soft 404s are to be avoided at all costs. Years back g learned/knew the myth of "link juice" and has taken steps to address the issue.

Always create/keep content that is USEFUL to TODAY'S visitor, even outdated info if it fulfills the criteria.

But trying to coax old links to new content that is not the same as the search expressed is NOT a good idea!