Canonicals for Splitting up large pagination pages

[Fubra]

Hi there,

Our dev team are looking at speeding up load times and making pages easier to browse by splitting up our pagination pages to 10 items per page rather than 1000s (exact number to be determined) - sounds like a great idea, but we're little concerned about the canonicals on this one.

at the moment we rel canonical (self) and prev and next. so b is rel b, prev a and next c - for each letter continued.

Now the url structure will be a1, a(n+), b1, b(n+), c1, c(n+).

Should we keep the canonicals to loop through the whole new structure or should we loop each letter within itself?

Either b1 rel b1, prev a(n+), next b2 - even though they're not strictly continuing the sequence.

Or a1 rel a1, next a2. a2 rel a2, prev a1, next a3 | b1 rel b1, next b2, b2 rel b2, prev b1, next b3 etc.

Would love to hear your points of view, hope that all made sense I'm leaning towards the first one even though it's not continuing the letter sequence, but because it's looping the alphabetically which is currently working for us already.

This is an example of the page we're hoping to split up: https://www.world-airport-codes.com/alphabetical/airport-name/b.html

[Fubra]

thanks, good to know we were on the right tracks

[GastonRiera]

Go with pagination across the alphabet.
The diagram in the middle.

Best luck!

VWXgRjj

[Fubra]

Hi,

I might not have explained our project sufficiently, sorry.

We are paginating a into a1, a2 and so on, that's a given.

My question is 'how best do i canonicalise these new pages?'

would you recommend using rel next and prev across the different alphabet pagination pages OR keeping the rel next and prev circulating in their own letters?

Please see the diagram, which hopefully explains this better!

kDDvDTi

[GastonRiera]

Please, lets separate canonical from pagination.

On one hand, pagination. Yes, i´ve suggested to paginate a,a1,a2,b,b1,b2,c... and so on.

On the other hand, canoincals. Use them to self-canonicalize each page from any parameter or whatever you might use.

Am i clear?
I think we are confusing too much one with another

Hope it helps.

Best luck.
GR

[Fubra]

I guess what we're doing is going from canonicalising via alphabet - a to b to c.

but now we're splitting up a into a mini-pagination. do I split canonicals up too?

[Fubra]

Hi, so you're recommending linking through the whole structure a, a1, a2, b, b1, b2, c, c1, c2 and so on?

Or would you suggest we loop within a, a1, a2 and not canonicalise a2 to b?

Thanks

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

To what im understanding from what you´ve said, looks fine to me.
Just finished reading a really great source about pagination:
Pagination attributes: link rel=”prev” and rel=”next" - ContentKing Academy

Also, canonicals and pagination attibutes are orthogonal concepts. As google describes it in the notes here:
Indicate paginated content - Google Search Console Help (It's nearly at the end of the page)

rel="next" and rel="prev" are orthogonal concepts to rel="canonical". You can include both declarations.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR