Pagination (rel prev/next)
SEOAlso: rel=prev/next · Paginated Series
Quick definition
Pagination is how a website splits long content, like a product category or blog archive, across multiple numbered pages. Rel prev/next was an HTML tag that told Google which paginated pages belonged together in a series. Google stopped using rel prev/next as a ranking signal in 2019, though the underlying pagination problem it tried to solve still exists.
What it actually means
Picture a long shopping aisle split into rooms by a curtain every twenty products. Rel prev/next was the sign on each curtain saying 'this room continues from the last one, keep walking.' It told Google's crawler that page 2 of a category listing wasn't a separate, competing piece of content but a continuation of page 1.
Google quietly dropped support for rel prev/next in March 2019. It had never been a strong ranking signal, and Google's own crawler had gotten better at understanding paginated series without the tag. Plenty of sites still have the markup in their code. It does nothing now. It's not harmful, just inert.
The real issue rel prev/next was patched over hasn't gone away. Ecommerce category pages, blog archives and search results pages generate thin, near-duplicate content page after page. Without a plan, that content competes with itself, dilutes crawl budget and confuses canonicalisation. Fixing pagination today means canonical tags, self-referencing canonicals on each page, sensible internal linking and, where it makes sense, a load-more or infinite-scroll pattern that Google can still crawl properly.
Rel prev/next died. The problem it was trying to fix, which is Google wasting crawl budget on thin duplicate pages, is still very much alive.
How it shows up
Pagination problems show up as thin content warnings in Search Console, category pages 3 and beyond that never rank for anything, and crawl stats showing Google spending disproportionate time on deep pagination pages instead of your money pages. It also shows up as duplicate title tags across paginated series, since most content management systems auto-generate 'Category Name - Page 2' with no real differentiation.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
Should I remove rel prev/next from my site?
You don't have to. It's not causing harm, Google simply ignores it. If you're rebuilding templates anyway, drop it and spend the effort on proper canonical tags and internal linking instead. If it's already there and working, leave it.
Does pagination hurt my SEO?
Pagination itself doesn't hurt you. Poorly handled pagination does, through thin duplicate pages, wasted crawl budget and unindexed deep pages. The fix is structural, not a single tag.
Is infinite scroll bad for SEO?
Not inherently, but pure scroll-triggered loading without matching URLs is often invisible to Googlebot. Use a hybrid pattern where scrolling updates the URL or provide a paginated fallback so the crawler can reach every page.
What should page 2 of a category look like now?
It should have a self-referencing canonical tag, a unique enough title and meta description to avoid duplicate content flags, and normal internal links to and from page 1 and page 3. Treat it as a real page, not an afterthought.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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