What to do with 302 redirects being indexed

[etruvian]

Hi there,

Our site's forums include permalinks that for some reason uses an intermediary URL that 302 redirects to the URL with the permalink anchor.

For example:

http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/

In the comments, there is a permalink to the following URL;

en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/  (there is no content here, and never has been).  This URL 302 redirects to the following final URL:

http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/?offset=0&limit=20#50c450005f2b949e3200001b

The problem is, Google is indexing the redirect URL (en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/) and showing duplicate content even though we are using the nofollow tag on these links.

Ideally, we would directly use the last link rather than redirecting.  Alternatively, I'd say a 301 redirect would be preferable.  But if both aren't available, is there a way to get these pages out of the index?

Is the canonical tag the best way?  I really wish I could just add /co/ to the robots.txt file, but I think they would still be in the index, right?

Thanks for your help!

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey,

Adding /co/ to your robots.txt will sort this out long term and you can remove these pages (or at least hasten the removal of them) in Google Webmaster Tools.

I have seen this approach before where a 302 page is used as a proxy to do some processing and then forwards on to something else. Not ideal from a Search perspective as this is a temporary redirect being used in a permanent situation.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

[etruvian]

That's helpful, I will do that.  Thanks Marcus!

[Marcus_Miller]

Pleasure.