301 on ALL 404 for Pagerank Recovery, bad idea?

[Bligoo]

Its a bad idea to do a 301 to the home page of the site on all 404 pages as a way of pagerank recovery? If so, why? Thanks,

[JamesNorquay]

I would make all internal pages which are 404 errors, turn them to 301s to relevant pages on the working site.

I need to see an example of this home pages with this relevant index page you desire to 301 it too.

[AlanMosley]

They will be ignored if you do this.

For large redirect projects, you’ll need to get dirty and redirect all that
you want to keep the value from.  There’s no simple way around this.  Skip mass
redirects to a single page, as most won’t end up passing value, and remember:
_keep all redirects pointed to pages which are relevant to the original. _
Skipping this step negates the value.
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx

[Bligoo]

We provide a free blogging and social network creation platform www.bligoo.com (think at this as a mix of Wordpress and Ning) Over time, some users remove their sites, leaving the incoming links. We are looking for a way to preserve this page rank. May be linking to a search page , maybe just to the front page, or may be is just a bad idea and can be penalice and we should loose this...

[Bligoo]

Ignored but not penaliced? I dont worry if it is ignored, I think there is more value on the home page for a visitor than a 404 page. I think google use the same criteria, no? Thanks for your answer!

[AlanMosley]

it depends one what sort of 404, if its a 404 because its in the index, then i would let them 404 and fade away, if its a 404 because it is a external link then i would 301 to a relevant page, if they ae internal links, then i would correc the link, as not to leak link juice using a 301

[Bligoo]

Thanks! I would like to 301 to this page http://bligoo.com/explore let me know what you think