Should i use NoIndex, Follow & Rel=Canonical Tag In One Page?

[DigitalJungle]

I am having pagination problem with one of my clients site , So I am deciding to use noindex, follow tag for the Page 2,3,4 etc  for not to have duplicated content issue, Because obviously SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics showing me lot of duplicate page contents.

And past 2 days i was in constant battle whether  to use noindex, follow tag or rel=canonical tag for the Page 2,3,4 and after going through all the Q&A,None of them gives me crystal clear answer.

So i thought "Why can't i use 2 of them together in one page"?

Because I think (correct me if i am wrong)

1.noindex, follow is old and traditional way to battle with dup contents
2.rel=canonical is new way to battle with dup contents

Reason to use 2 of them together is:

Bot finds to the non-canonical page first and looks at the tag nofollow,index and he knows not to index that page,meantime he finds out that canonical url is something something according to the url given in the tag,NO?

Help Please???

[DigitalJungle]

Tom,

Thanks for the response, Yes, It is the best way to discover the products. So i believe noindex, follow is better ,too

Just needed second person to confirm ,

But i was wondering why Matt Cutts blog is using all 2 of them together?

Instance:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/page/3/

[Tom-Anthony]

Hi!

There shouldn't really be a necessity to mix rel=canonical with meta noindex; the rel=canonical would take care of it without sending mixed signals to Google.

For your scenario, how to treat the paginated pages depends on whether they are the only/best way to discover the products listed on those pages. If they are, then noindex, follow probably makes sense. I think it would likely be the best answer.

Good luck!