Need suggestion: Should the user profile link be disallowed in robots.txt

[AnkurJ]

I maintain a myBB based forum here. The user profile links look something like this http://www.learnqtp.com/forums/User-Ankur

Now in my GWT, I can see many 404 errors for user profile links. This is primarily because we have tight control over spam and auto-profiles generated by bots. Either our moderators or our spam control software delete such spammy member profiles on a periodic basis but by then Google indexes those profiles.

I am wondering, would it be a good idea to disallow User profiles links using robots.txt?

Something like

Disallow: /forums/User-*

[IM_Learner]

Use meta="noindex" tag for the user profile pages. It is more effective.

Regards

[AnkurJ]

Let me re-phrase my question a bit. Would it be a good idea to get the user profile links noindexed in the first place? or should we keep them indexed in Google?

[IM_Learner]

If you are talking about user profile pages, it is your call.

If you are talking about links that users post in profile pages, use as signatures or use in threads, make sure to mark them nofollow.

Regards

[AnkurJ]

I am only talking about user profile pages not the links inside them. I have already taken care of them.

Request others to please come up with suggestions.

[KristinaKledzik]

Maybe you should noindex user profile pages until they've been active on the site long enough that a) you're sure they're not a spam bot and b) they're actually active users, with some interesting information to share on their user page?

Like Shaliendra said, this is your call. It's really about your website goals, and what those user pages do for the site. Are you getting much organic traffic from user pages? If you aren't, it's probably easiest to just noindex all user pages. But if some profiles are bringing in organic traffic, I'd recommend that you add a noindex tag immediately, but remove it once someone has commented a few times.

Does that help?