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Don't forget the basics > Block those search result pages
It's right there in Google's guidelines>
Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines
Take a read of this article, one of the SEO consultants eventually figured it out and the site recovered ;)
seomarketinggoddess.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/seo-issues-it-is-penguin-is-it-panda-or.html
It's right there in Google's guidelines>
Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines
Take a read of this article, one of the SEO consultants eventually figured it out and the site recovered ;)
seomarketinggoddess.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/seo-issues-it-is-penguin-is-it-panda-or.html
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Yes. I use rel=canonical in addition to noindex. :)
Be careful not to use both at the same time though ;)Feb 7, 2013- Nothing strange with John's reply, it's what I would expect could potentially happen when your providing mixed signals.
"Generally speaking I would avoid [...] using the rel=canonical together with the noindex because it can happen that sometimes we take the noindex and also apply it to the canonical [URL]"Feb 7, 2013 
G cannot do things like that - as they have to account for User Error (and you'd be amazed how often they have to account for that).Feb 7, 2013- So a page has both NoIndex and Rel=Canonical.
That means;
1) Don't index "this" URL
2) Merge values of "this" URL to the designated URL
As far as I know, G can handle that - though technically the NoIndex shouldn't be required (the page shouldn't show in the index due to the CLE (and yes, I know, it's a fail safe incase G opt to ignore the CLE)).
The problem G faces is the huge number of sites out there that screw this sort of thing up.
Multiple CLEs, malformed CLE URLs, Multiple robots meta/conflicting directives etc.
So G has to draw the line somewhere.Feb 8, 2013 - It boils down to several aspects;
1) Misuse/mistakes
2) G changing their definitions
3) Control
At the end of the day, as a site owner (or SEO etc.), you want to control how the site is perceived and how it shows in the SERPs.
G fights against that though more often than not - they want it their way, which often runs against our logic.
Then throw in some confusion as definitions/behaviours change, and a dose of misunderstandings/misapplications,
and we get a mess :(Feb 8, 2013 - Not specifically the CLE, but things like "NoFollow" etc.
G introduced it as a way to tell the SEs to ignore a link - then opted to treat it as a request, not a directive.
They do that sort of thing every so often - and it causes more confusion.Feb 8, 2013
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