Thanks. I would like to add however the better way would be for search.php to be off limits via a robots.txt file so Google doesn't try to index search links at all.
This is a generic VB robots.txt file for a forum in the /forums/ directory of a website-
Code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /forums/admincp/
Disallow: /forums/clientscript/
Disallow: /forums/cpstyles/
Disallow: /forums/customavatars/
Disallow: /forums/customprofilepics/
Disallow: /forums/images/
Disallow: /forums/modcp/
Disallow: /forums/attachment.php
Disallow: /forums/editpost.php
Disallow: /forums/image.php
Disallow: /forums/misc.php
Disallow: /forums/moderator.php
Disallow: /forums/newattachment.php
Disallow: /forums/newreply.php
Disallow: /forums/newthread.php
Disallow: /forums/online.php
Disallow: /forums/poll.php
Disallow: /forums/postings.php
Disallow: /forums/printthread.php
Disallow: /forums/private.php
Disallow: /forums/profile.php
Disallow: /forums/register.php
Disallow: /forums/report.php
Disallow: /forums/reputation.php
Disallow: /forums/search.php
Disallow: /forums/sendmessage.php
Disallow: /forums/subscription.php
Disallow: /forums/threadrate.php
Disallow: /forums/usernote.php