Google Reiterates: Ignore Link Spam to 404 Pages

John Mueller from Google advises that link spam to 404 pages should be ignored because they are essentially dropped by Google. If the links are going to URLs that return a 404 status on your site, they do nothing since there's no indexable destination URL, which means there's no link to worry about.

According to Google's recent statements, specifically by John Mueller, there is no need to spend time disavowing spammy links. Google has become adept at ignoring spammy links, and Mueller suggests focusing on developing a holistic and forward-looking strategy for your site overall rather than on incremental tweaks that likely won't have a significant impact.

Since the release of Penguin 4.0 in 2016, Google's approach to handling spammy links has changed from demoting sites with such links to devaluing the links themselves. This means that instead of penalizing the site's rankings, Google simply ignores the spammy or toxic links and does not factor them into the site's ranking.