Confirm what status code a URL really returns.
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Browsers hide status codes, which is how soft 404s survive: a page that says "not found" to a human while returning 200 to a crawler stays indexed indefinitely as a real page.
A page that displays an error message to visitors but returns HTTP 200. Google treats it as a real page and keeps it indexed. It has to return a genuine 404 status.
Not inherently. Pages get removed and 404 is the correct answer. It becomes a problem when pages with inbound links 404 instead of redirecting to something relevant.
410 means permanently gone and can be dropped from the index slightly faster. 404 is fine in nearly all cases.
Only where a genuinely relevant destination exists. Redirecting everything to the homepage is treated as a soft 404 and helps nobody.
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