Should I index my search result pages?

[jombay]

I have a job site and I am planning to introduce a search feature.

The question I have is, is it a good idea to index search results even if the query parameters are not there?

Example: A user searches for "marketing jobs in New York that pay more than 50000$". A random page will be generated like example.com/job-result/marketing-jobs-in-new-york-that-pay-more-than-50000/

For any search that gets executed, the same procedure would be followed.

This would result in a large number of search result pages automatically set up for long tail keywords.

Do you think this is a good idea? Or is it a bad idea based on all the recent Google algorithm updates?

[TylerAbernethy]

Closest easy option I could find in my theme settings was to limit the content excerpt word count to 1 word....

[jombay]

If you are using Wordpress SEO by yoast plugin, you can do that easily.

[TylerAbernethy]

Do you guys know how to tell wordpress to not allow them to be indexed without messing with robots.txt?

Or is there any easy way?

[TakeshiYoung]

It can be a good way to drive long tail traffic to your site, it can risk a Panda penalty if you generate too many pages. Many sites allow their search pages to be indexed, and it comes down to your domain authority, number of searches being done, amount of unique content you have, and your risk tolerance. A safer approach is to simply log all searches done on your site, then create unique content around the terms that come up often, this can be a good way to identify good keywords to target.

[David_ODonnell]

Sounds like a recipe for a duplicate content disaster, there would be nothing unique on the pages, just a list of jobs. Do not index those search result pages.