What is pagination?
Pagination is splitting a long list, such as a blog archive, a product category, or a comment thread, across a series of numbered pages. In WordPress these live at URLs like /blog/page/2/ or /category/guides/page/3/, each linked to the next and previous pages.
For SEO, the question is how search engines find and treat pages 2 onward. Google announced in 2019 that it no longer uses rel="next" and rel="prev" as indexing signals. Today each paginated page is simply a page: Google crawls it, follows its links, and indexes it on its own merits.
How Google treats paginated pages
The main job of pages 2, 3 and beyond is discovery. Older posts and deeper products are often only linked from those pages, so crawlers need to reach them through normal links.
Google's current guidance on pagination comes down to a few points:
- Give each page its own URL, such as
?page=2or/page/2/. Do not use URL fragments (#page2), because Google ignores them. - Link pages with regular
<a href>links so crawlers can follow them. - Let each page use a self-referencing canonical. Do not canonicalize page 2 to page 1, since page 2 lists different items.
- Put the list items in the HTML of each page, not only in content loaded after a click.
Example
A category archive with 60 posts at 10 per page produces six URLs:
/category/brewing/
/category/brewing/page/2/
...
/category/brewing/page/6/
Each page should output its own canonical:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/category/brewing/page/2/" />
If page 6 is the only place linking to your oldest posts, those posts depend on crawlers walking five pages deep. Linking to them from newer, related posts shortens that path. See internal linking.
Infinite scroll and load more
Infinite scroll and "load more" buttons often fetch items with JavaScript without changing the URL. Crawlers do not scroll or click, so items beyond the first batch can become invisible to them. Google's recommendation is to back infinite scroll with paginated URLs that each work on their own, and to update the URL as the visitor scrolls. More on this in JavaScript SEO.
Common mistakes
- Noindexing page 2 onward and adding nofollow. Noindex is sometimes reasonable on deep archive pages, but nofollow cuts crawlers off from the posts listed there.
- Canonicalizing every page to page 1. This tells Google to ignore the content on later pages.
- Very small page sizes. Ten items per page on a 2,000-post blog puts old posts 200 clicks deep. Larger pages or better category structure help.
- Paginated pages in the sitemap. List the posts themselves in your XML sitemap, not archive page 14.
Common questions
Does Google still use rel=next and rel=prev?
No. Google said in 2019 that it had stopped using them for indexing. They do no harm, and some other search engines or browsers may still read them.
Should paginated pages be noindexed?
Usually not. Leaving them indexable with self-referencing canonicals is the simplest option. If you do noindex deep pages, keep their links followable so crawlers still reach the items.
Is a view-all page better than pagination?
It can be if the full list loads quickly. For long lists, a view-all page gets heavy, and plain pagination is the safer choice.