Pagination or View All

[DoRM]

Right now our site is using ajax and we need to change it so all 200+ products will get crawled not just the first 52 on page first page.  We are looking at doing the rel=next/ rel=previous or doing it so we have a link going to the View all product page.  Or maybe doing the rel=next/ previous and using the canonical to point to the view all etc.  I have read http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 and http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html about  it.

Now we are trying to figure out what is the best option.  Thought. Here is our site. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/750/Motorcycle-Tires-All  Also if we do not do the rel=next just make the view all items as a link that google can crawl is there a way to still have our current url be the one for view all items but only show 52 item unless the click view all items and not have it look like cloaking?

Hope this made sense.

[rhutchings]

lol.  Hey Derek!

Ya, I would assume that page ranks well since its a single url and doesnt change based on the ajax/java functionality.  Getting into multiple urls in search results based on categories, filters and groupings gets real hairy real fast.  I would recommend thinking through this before you do it.  Google will start to index all the page variations (even with canonicalization in place) and then you start getting duplicate content, or unwanted indexed pages.

i would still use the "view all" or make sure that you have a good internal linking structure along with the canonical tagging to get the information architecture pointing to the right spots still.

Hit me up at our next event and lets chat a bit about it.

[DoRM]

Hey Ryan it is good to see you.  I am Derek from SLC/SEM.

No it is ajax right now for the filter and different pages.  We are going to give the pages different urls and we might give the filter different urls too.    Would you recommend giving the filters their own URLs too?

Overall it looks like doing the "view all" is the best option.  I am thinking of the best way to do that.  For example right now this url (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/43/81/165/723/ATV-Tires-All) ranks pages one number 4 on google for the target key work ATV tires.  So we want to keep that page as the view all.

But they want to have it so when people click on the link in the nav. it takes them to the page with only 52 products and not all of them.

What would you suggest?

[rhutchings]

I have experimented with various methods and best practices here across multiple site.  Here is my suggestion:

1.  Do both the rel next/prev and the view all option.  In my testing the rel next/prev doesnt really have much impact alone, but doing both rel tags and the canonical to the view all could work great. Google wont really want to pay attention to the paginated content, even when you try to rel next/prev.

However, i did check your site out and it currently doesn't look like you are changing urls based on filters or anything.  Are you saying that you are changing that?  Would still do both, and then point some additional links to the view all page from some static internal pages and some external sources.

[DoRM]

If we do the view all option we do not want to have to do a rel=canonical and the current url to the new "view all" and possibly lose rankings.

thoughts?