Q: Redirecting all dead URLs to the homepage — how badly did that actually hurt?

Q: Redirecting all dead URLs to the homepage — how badly did that actually hurt?

We see this shortcut constantly, so here's the cost in numbers.

Short answer: Google treats those as soft 404s and ignores the equity.

Long answer: a site lost a content section and 301-ed all ~900 of those URLs to the homepage to "keep the link value." GSC flagged 740 of them as "soft 404" within two weeks — Google saw an irrelevant target and dropped them. None of the rankings transferred. Traffic stayed down 18%.

We re-mapped them to the most topically relevant live pages instead. Within 4 weeks, ~60% of the lost rankings reappeared and the soft-404 count fell to under 50.

Next step: a 301 only passes value when the target closely matches the old page's intent — relevance, not just a 200 response, is what counts.