Have thousands of 404s with backlinks. Should I redirect them all at once or over time?

[DA2013]

These error pages are being redirected to the most relevant page, not mass redirected to the home page.

Thanks for reading!

[BeanstalkIM]

I'm sure there's folks on both sides but giving my opinion, provided that the redirects are (as you say) directing visitors tot he right page then I'd just do them all at once.  Right now they're being picked up as dead links, you're just fixing that not gaming the system.

One could ask WWGD?  Redirecting serves the visitor better so Google would say it's best to redirect them than leave them floundering on a 404 page.  In this case I have to agree.

[CHarkins]

Agree with Dave. Since you are doing one-for-one 301 redirects then you are delivering the user to the page that best matches their intent.

If you were redirecting all of these to the home page, then that could be a problem.