Will Redirecting Your 404 Page to Your Homepage Hurt Your SEO?

Pointing all your broken URLs to your homepage feels like a reasonable solution. Visitors go somewhere, nobody hits a dead end, problem solved. Except Google recognizes the mismatch between what was requested and where it landed — and treats it accordingly. Here's the honest answer on whether your homepage redirect is actively hurting your SEO, the specific situations where it's costing you real ranking power, and the straightforward fixes that recover it.