Do sites really need a 404 page?

[ed123456]

We have people posting broken links to our site is this looking us link juice as they link to 404 pages. We could redirect to the homepage or just render the home page content, in both cases we can still display a clear page not found message. Is this legal (white hat).

[TellThemEverything]

Yes, you should have a real 404 page.

• You'll help the people that follow their links - you should have a list of links that they might be looking for - and a search box.  Remember, you want these visitors to stay on your site, not bounce.
• Google wants you to have one. In fact many bots will test your site has a 404 page that returns the correct status (404 of course). Make sure you test yours. Many incorrectly return 200 (ok) status.

If you want to keep (some of) the linkjuice, and you know where they want to go, you would 301 redirect to the correct destination.

[ed123456]

Thanks this was what I thought, as all the reputable sites have them.

[KeriMorgret]

Also, some site owners will run link checking tools on their sites that look at their off-site links and see if any return 404s. If you're not returning a 404, the site owners may not know (via an automated tool) that the link is broken.