How should I go about repairing 400,000 404 error pages?

[DA2013]

My thinking is to make a list of most linked to and most trafficked error pages, and just redirect those, but I don't know how to get all that data because i can't even download all the error pages from Webmaster Tools, and even then, how would i get backlink data except by checking each link manually?

Are there any detailed step-by-step instructions on this that I missed in my Googling?

Thanks for reading!!

[stevecounsell]

I'm guessing that you deleted a whole site without 301'ing.

What is the base URL? (myDomain.com)?

There is a chance that you could use an .HTACCESS file with some redirect rules to send whole batches to a new domain but these are all guesses without further detail from you.

Good luck...

Steve

[DA2013]

Thanks for responding!

The site wasn't deleted. I will have to investigate what caused all these 404s. I suspect a redesign.

Is there a way get a full list of 404 pages with backlink information if possible for each URL?

Thanks!

[stevecounsell]

Try using ScreamingFrog (app for mac and pc). It's free and will crawl your site and list all the errors an dresponse codes 9inc 404s) you can export these as a CSV file.

HTH

Steve