Query string category pagination

[MickEdwards]

I've been reading some posts on the merits and pitfalls of using rel=prev, rel=next and canonical, but I just wanted to double check the right solution.

example.com/birth-announcements

example.com/birth-announcements?p=2

example.com/birth-announcements?p=3

With a small selection of products on each variation.

So at the moment there is a canonical on all of them to the base example.com/birth-announcements.  The problem is we are having difficulty getting the products within p=* indexed.  I don't think from all I read that rel=prev/rel=next is the way to go.  Would the solution (or best way to go) be to create a "view-all" filter and set that to be the canonical URL, so all product URLs are in clear focus for Google.  The volume of products won't (shouldn't) have too much of an impact on page load.  Or am I wrong and rel=prev/rel=next  is a feasible solution?

[MickEdwards]

Hi Andy,

thanks for the reply.  Yes, each p=* is identical to the base category URL, the only differences are a small handful of products on each p=* which are not really offering anything to those pages in the way of uniqueness at all in the way they are presented.  So from that point of view the canonical makes sense.  However, I don't want to take Google's focus away from cleanly crawling all the products within p=*

So rel=next & prev for me opens up duplication issues as there are no "parts" of content, it's going to be effectively the same category textual content.

However if I implement &view-all and set the canonical to that version i'm then worried Google may be problematic and not play ball.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Michael,

The problem is we are having difficulty getting the products within p= indexed*

If you have a canonical set on a p=* to the base URL, this will mean those pages never get indexed by Google.

If each page is different /p=1, /p=2 et al, then a rel prev / next will handle this for you. However, it depends on what is on each of those pages. If they are virtually identical (or at least very similar) then the solution might be to leave the canonical in place - but that doesn't sound like what you want.

If what I am reading is right, the nel=next & prev would work for you - but remove the canonical on each page. You could also use a view-all as this will work, but have a read of some of the options here. It covers what you need to know.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

-Andy