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Is linking to search results bad for SEO?
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If we have pages on our site that link to search results is that a bad thing? Should we set the links to "nofollow"?
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No it will no be a problem. Even if the search results show duplicate content, to show a sample of pages is fine.
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Those pages due to the nature of searching for them are the exact same same pages as your normal content just that the url has changed . The best way in my opinion to address this is by using the canonical element you can read more here . if your normal pages have the element embedded in the code any instance of duplicate content should not be an issue.
Hope this helps
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So you have links to search results on your page and those links are followed and indexed by google. LInking to a search result is not a bad thing per se. Just make sure, that the indexed pages are not to similar (i.e. duplicate content).
An example:
if the indexed page for "widget" (domain.tld/search/widget) and the indexed page for "widgets" (domain.tld/search/widgets) are similar or nearly similar they might be considered duplicate content, resulting in none of them ranking. One way to test this is to use d/c checker or the seomoz campaign. You want at least 20% difference in any combination of pages.
If you manually set these links you might want to check whether the results are different enough. If you don't want these pages to be indexed at all just "follow, noindex" them.
Besides that it's not a problem.
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Search results on our own domain
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Hi michelleh,
to what pages specifically are you linking? Google results like http://www.google.com/search?q=query ? Pages on other domains? could you please give some more information?
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