Has anyone encountered a large SKU store that have implemented a 301 redirect on the 404 page pointed at the home page?

Apparently, that is a best practice according to an ecom SEO agency that my client has worked with for a few years. My client was told that this way he won't have to manually redirect 404 pages, and it won't impact UX.

I disagree with that, in terms of UX, a person going into a product/collection page to end up seeing "Page not found" and immediately get redirected to the home page isn't the ultimate customer journey.

Also, I disagree that this is a best practice, as missing collections with 20-30 internal links and backlinks are better off redirected to other closely relevant collections. The contextual links become useless when the page hits 404, and the 404 page is then redirected to the home page.

I thought it could be related to a store migration, but my client and his marketing director are not aware of any store migrations.

This has now created over 1k 404 pages after being neglected for years. We talk a mix of products and collections.

Does anyone from the big SEO league here have experience with a similar situation?

Thanks

Adrian

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