Pagination

Google stopped using rel=next and rel=prev in 2019. It now treats each paginated page as its own URL. That means page two, three and four must stand on their own.

Do not point every page to page one with a canonical. That hides the rest from indexing. Each page needs a self-referencing canonical.

1. 1

   Give each page a stable URL

   Use a clean pattern like /blog?page=2 or /category/widgets/page/3/. Avoid changing the order or count on every load.

2. 2

   Use a self-referencing canonical

   On /blog?page=2 the canonical is /blog?page=2. The same rule for every page in the sequence.

3. 3

   Link pages together with real links

   Add Previous and Next links as normal <a> elements. Also link to key page numbers, for example 1, 2, 3, 10, Last, to aid crawling.

4. 4

   Keep items reachable outside pagination

   Link items from categories, tags, related items and sitemaps. Do not rely on page depth alone for discovery.

5. 5

   Set titles and headings clearly

   For example: Title, Blog page 2 of 5. H1, Blog. Include the page number so searchers know what they will open.

A good page looks like /blog?page=3 with its own title, a self-canonical, links to page 2 and 4, and item cards linking to detail pages.

If a list is short, offer a single view-all page. Canonicalise the parts to the view-all. This gives one strong URL that can rank for the head term.

Do not use view-all when the list is long or heavy. It can slow to load and hurt Core Web Vitals. Keep to paginated parts in that case.

Infinite scroll is fine for users, but Google needs paginated URLs behind it. Build server-rendered pages for page 2, 3 and so on, and map the scroll positions to them.

• Update the URL as the user scrolls to match the underlying page, for example pushState to /blog?page=3
• Expose the same items at the same offsets on the paginated URLs
• Make sure the Next and Previous links exist in the HTML, not only via JavaScript

• Pick three sequences to audit, for example /blog, /changelog, /category/widgets
• Open page 2 and 3 of each, check the canonical points to itself
• Use View Source to confirm real <a> links for Previous, Next and numbered links
• In Search Console, inspect /page/2 and /page/3 URLs to see if they are indexed
• Check that items linked on page 3 are also reachable from their categories or sitemaps
• Watch crawl stats for spikes if you add many new pages at once