The below thread on google makes sense. one of the comments said the below
‘There is no point for URLs that do not have their own content to redirect to search URLs with final status 200 OK. This way they take time and resources to be crawled and the redirects processed, even if it is just to see the noindex tag.
URLs that do not have their own content, non-existing URLs, or incorrect URLs, or out of date URLs, need to return status 404 Not Found for all user-agents that visit the site.’
How to return 404 for URLs that do not have their own content, non-existing URLs, or incorrect URLs, or out of date URLs, using GeneratePress?