Pagination divides a long set of items, such as blog posts or integrations, into a series of pages. For search engines, the goal is that every item in the series can be discovered through ordinary links and that each paginated page is treated as its own URL. Google stopped using rel=next and rel=prev as an indexing signal in 2019, so the links themselves do the work.
How Google handles paginated series
Google treats page 2, page 3 and so on as separate URLs. It discovers items deeper in the list by following links from one page to the next. Google's guidance is to give each page a unique URL, link pages sequentially with normal a href links, and not to canonicalize every page to page 1, because that tells Google the later pages are duplicates and their items may not be found.
<!-- On /blog/page/3 -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/blog/page/3">
<a href="/blog/page/2">Previous</a>
<a href="/blog/page/4">Next</a>Practical guidance
Use path or query URLs consistently, such as /blog/page/2 or /blog?page=2. Page 1 should be the clean listing URL, not ?page=1 as a separate duplicate. Paginated pages can share titles with a page number appended. It is common to keep them indexable, though some sites noindex deep pages; either way, keep them crawlable so links to items are followed.
- Link to first, previous, next and a few nearby page numbers
- Do not block paginated URLs in robots.txt
- Keep items in a stable order so content does not jump between pages
- Add important items to the XML sitemap so discovery does not depend on depth
Pagination versus infinite scroll and load more
Infinite scroll and load more buttons are fine for users, but crawlers do not scroll or click. If you use them, back them with paginated URLs that exist on their own and are linked in the HTML.
Example
Old posts lost behind page 40
Quillbrook, a knowledge base SaaS, has hundreds of blog posts listed ten per page with only Next and Previous links. Older posts sit dozens of clicks from the homepage and are rarely crawled. Adding category archives, more posts per page and links to page ranges shortens the path, and the sitemap now lists every post.
Common mistakes
Canonicalizing all pages to page 1
This asks Google to ignore pages 2 and up, which can hide the items listed on them.
Still relying on rel=next and rel=prev
Google no longer uses them for indexing. They are harmless, but they do not replace crawlable links.
Questions
It is not required. If they are noindexed for a long time, Google may eventually crawl their links less, so make sure items are linked from elsewhere too.
