404 - page authority?
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If in open site explorer my 404 pages have a higer page authority - what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page. For example www.site.com/widget is a 404 but has authority according to open site explorer - but the page i see in the serps is www.site.com/widget/ with the / at the end. so what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page?
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I would recommend taking a look at slash vs non slash pages and seeing how many non slash pages on your site are listed as 404'ing. Look at your 404'd pages in Google Webmaster Tools. If this happened to one URL chances it happened to many across your site and if so this is a big issue but can be resolved very easily by appending the slash to the end of all URLs.
Some code might have broken or been improperly or accidentally changed by a webmaster, because if the slash URL version was originally there then that used to be the standard and something technical caused it to go away. This could have broken if you changed from Microsoft to Linux or vice-versa - the .htaccess file or modrewrite would stop working if that was the case.
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More importantly, why are you getting a 404 when viewing Site.com/widget? That doesn't make sense. If Site.com/widget/ resolves, so too should Site.com/widget.
The page has authority because it's getting linked to. If someone is linking to your page they aren't going to add a slash unless they know they have to. You will need to properly setup your rewrite rules so that the URLs resolve correctly.
Once you make that update the page authority will transfer correctly, and yes, it will help.
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