What can I do with 8000+ 302 temporary redirects?

[TomVolpe]

Hi I'm working on a clients site that has an odd structure with 8000+ 302 temporary redirects. They are related to actions on the site (they have to be there and work this way for the site to function) but they also have a stupid number of perameters. Would it be ok to block them all in the robots.txt file? Would that make any difference?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Howdy,

Based on the information, I can't tell you for sure what to do, but I can give you some general guidelines.

The major search engines have indicated they will treat 302s similar to 301s if they see them long enough, so it's quite possible those redirects are getting crawled and indexed, and even passing some authority.

If you block them via robots.txt, it will prevent search engines from crawling, but if the URLs are already in the index, it will do nothing to remove them (you'd have to put a meta robots NOINDEX in the head, or use Google Webmasters URL removal tool)

After you decide what to do with these URLs,  you can tackle the parameter problem - which is only an issue if you choose to keep them in the index. Proper canoncial tags will go a long way in addressing these, and is the proper way to go. You can also address parameters in Google Webmaster Tools, but this is generally a less ideal solution than using canonical tags.

Sorrry for the very broad answer. Feel free to follow up with any specifics you might be curious about.