Why would changing 404 pages increase traffic by 9%?

[Brand_Psychic]

Neil Patel claimed in this article that by creating a custom 404 page that links out to 25 to 50 random internal pages on the website, he was able to increase the traffic of Techcrunch by 9%.

I'm a bit skeptical about this claim. A couple of questions:

1. Is this theory sound? If you've personally tried this or have read other articles supporting Neil, I'd love to learn more.
2. Would a big site like Techcrunch really have problems with Google not indexing all of its pages?
3. Also, does getting more pages crawled help you get more traffic? Specifically, would it help a site like mine? For reference, my site gets an average of 12,040 pages crawled per day in last 90 days. Currently 28,922 pages have been indexed.
4. Are there any possible downsides to trying this?

Thanks!

[EGOL]

You can do this and it might be helpful.   But, I am betting that TechCruch had big problems from tons of systematically deleted pages.

So, Neil Patel did not really "create" this traffic, he simply "salvaged" it... grabbed it before it went down the drain as a result of sloppy work by TechCrunch....  and like most "salvaged goods" it was probably low quality traffic after being 404ed and disappointed.

[RobertFisher]

Egol's answer is really well thought out. One thing that really surprised me by Neil's article was the huge slap in the face ads. I say no to the first and it is as if I am assaulted over and over. Cannot stand that kind of experience and I actually think Neil is quite bright. Bummer.

Best

[EGOL]

I feel the same way about the ads.  They are like a bad dog that rushes at you when you approach the property line and chases you down the street.  Worse even than Forbes - and they are really bad IMO.

[Brand_Psychic]

The article claims that the traffic bump is coming from increased indexing of TechCrunch due to Neil adding a widget that links out to 25-50 random internal pages on the 404 error pages.

But your explanation makes more sense, and that means this article is kinda misleading. Most small-mid sized sites don't have problems with systematically deleted pages. So for this tip to be added to an article directed at webmasters of small-mid sized sites seems a bit out of place.

[Brand_Psychic]

Hi Robert! Nice seeing you again.

Yeah, it looks like Neil is pushing his Quicksprout Traffic University very aggressively. Have you heard either good or bad things about that course? It has a money back guarantee so there's no risk to money. But if the advice is bad, then the damage might be severe.

[EGOL]

I agree with you.

It was a chest thumper article.  It simply crows about rigging a fix for historic bad practice.  It does not explain what caused the problem and the randon links solution isn't the best way to handle 404 traffic and probably not the best way to repair site structure problems.