Search directory - How to apply robots

[Blenny]

Hi.

On the site I'm working on, we use a search directory to display our search results. It displays as follows -

Mydomain.com/search-results/#

With the dynamic search results appearing after the hash tag.

Because of the structure of the website, many of the lefthand nav defers back to this directory. I know that most websites "noindex, nofollow" the search results pages, but due to the ease of customers generating them, I'm afraid that if I do this, we'll miss out on the inevitable links customers will provide...and, even though it's just the main search directory, these links will still help my domain. The search is all java-generated so there's nothing for spiders to follow within this directory - save the standard category nav.

How should I handle this?

Thanks.

[jeffreytrull1]

Have you considered switching to simply "noindex, follow" for these pages? This would both keep them out of the search index and would allow for the benefit of external links to these pages.

[Blenny]

That was my first instinct as well - but I wanted to check if there was a better move? Thanks for your help!