Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Rel="prev" / "next"
-
Hi guys,
The tech department implemented rel="prev" and rel="next" on this website a long time ago.
We also added a canonical tag to the 'own' page.We're talking about the following situation:
However we still see a situation where a lot of paginated pages are visible in the SERP.
Is this just a case of rel="prev" and "next" being directives to Google?
And in this specific case, Google deciding to not only show the 1st page in the SERP, but still show most of the paginated pages in the SERP?Please let me know, what you think.
Regards,
Tom -
Interesting development which may be of interest to you Ernst:
Google admitted just the other day that they "haven't supported rel=next/prev for years." https://searchengineland.com/google-apologizes-for-relnext-prev-mixup-314494
"Should you remove the markup? Probably not. Google has communicated this morning in a video hangout that while it may not use rel=next/prev for search, it can still be used by other search engines and by browsers, among other reasons. So while Google may not use it for search indexing, rel=prev/next can still be useful for users. Specifically some browsers might use those annotations for things like prefetching and accessibility purposes."
-
I was looking into this today and happened across this line in Google's Search Console Help documents:
rel="next" and rel="prev" are compatible with rel="canonical" values. You can include both declarations in the same page. For example, a page can contain both of the following HTML tags:
Here's the link to the doc - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
But I wouldn't be using a canonical to somewhere else and the rel="next" directives.
-
I had never actually considered that. My thought is, no. I'd literally just leave canonicals entirely off ambiguous URLs like that. Have seen a lot of instances lately where over-zealous sculpting has led to loss of traffic. In the instance of this exact comment / reply, it's just my hunch here. I'd just remove the tag entirely. There's always risk in adding layers of unrequired complexity, even if it's not immediately obvious
-
I'm going to second what @effectdigital is outlining here. Google does what they want, and sometimes they index paginated pages on your site. If you have things setup properly and you are still seeing paginated pages when you do a site: search in Google then you likely need to strengthen your content elsewhere because Google still sees these paginated URLs as authoritative for your domain.
I have a question for you @effectdigital - Do you still self-canonical with rel= prev / next? I mean, I knew that you wouldn't want to canonical to another URL, but I hadn't really thought about the self-canonical until I read something you said above. Hadn't really thought about that one haha.
Thanks!
-
Both are directives to google. All of the "rel=" links are directives, including hreflang, alternate/mobile, AMP, prev/next
It's not really necessary to use a canonical tag in addition to any of the other "rel=" family links
A canonical tag says to Google: "I am not the real version of this page, I am non-canonical. For the canonical version of the page, please follow this canonical tag. Don't index me at all, index the canonical destination URL"
The pagination based prev/next links say to Google: "I am the main version of this page, or one of the other paginated URLs. Did you know, if you follow this link - you can find and index more pages of content if you want to"
So the problem you create by using both, is creating the following dialogue to Google:
1.) "Hey Google. Follow this link to index paginated URLs if they happen to have useful content on"
*Google goes to paginated URL
2.) "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE Google!? I am not canonical, go back where you came from #buildawall"
*Google goes backwards to non-paginated URL
3.) "Hey Google. Follow this link to index paginated URLs if they happen to have useful content on"
*Google goes to paginated URL
4.) "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE Google!? I am not canonical, go back where you came from"
*Google goes backwards to non-paginated URL
... etc.
As you can see, it's confusing to tell Google to crawl and index URLs with one tag, then tell them not to with another. All your indexation factors (canonical tags, other rel links, robots tags, HTTP header X-Robots, sitemap, robots.txt files) should tell the SAME, logical story (not different stories, which contradict each other directly)
If you point to a web page via any indexation method (rel links, sitemap links) then don't turn around and say, actually no I've changed my mind I don't want this page indexed (by 'canonicalling' that URL elsewhere). If you didn't want a page to be indexed, then don't even point to it via other indexation methods
A) If you do want those URLs to be indexed by Google:
1) Keep in mind that by using rel prev/next, Google will know they are pagination URLs and won't weight them very strongly. If however, Google decides that some paginated content is very useful - it may decide to rank such URLs
2) If you want this, remove the canonical tags and leave rel=prev/next deployment as-is
B) If you don't want those URLs to be indexed by Google:
1) This is only a directive, Google can disregard it but it will be much more effective as you won't be contradicting yourself
2) Remove the rel= prev / next stuff completely from paginated URLs. Leave the canonical tag in place and also add a Meta no-index tag to paginated URLs
Keep in mind that, just because you block Google from indexing the paginated URLs, it doesn't necessarily mean that the non-paginated URLs will rank in the same place (with the same power) as the paginated URLs (which will be, mostly lost from the rankings). You may get lucky in that area, you may not (depending upon the content similarity of both URLs, depending whether or not Google's perceived reason to rank that URL - hinged strongly on a piece of content that exists only in the paginated URL variant)
My advice? Don't be a control freak and use option (B). Instead use option (A). Free traffic is free traffic, don't turn your nose up at it
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?
Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold1 -
How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country
How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)? I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it. Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
De-indexing product "quick view" pages
Hi there, The e-commerce website I am working on seems to index all of the "quick view" pages (which normally occur as iframes on the category page) as their own unique pages, creating thousands of duplicate pages / overly-dynamic URLs. Each indexed "quick view" page has the following URL structure: www.mydomain.com/catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodId=89514&catgId=cat140142&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=475&width=700 where the only thing that changes is the product ID and category number. Would using "disallow" in Robots.txt be the best way to de-indexing all of these URLs? If so, could someone help me identify how to best structure this disallow statement? Would it be: Disallow: /catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodID=* Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
Is it a bad idea to have a "press" page and link to press mentions of our company?
We've recently been getting quite a bit of press. Would it be wise to create a "press" page and link to mentions of us or would this devalue the links on the press pages as Google may think they reciprocal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JenniferDacosta0 -
Google Said "Repeat the search with the omitted results included."
We have some pages targeting the different countries but with the Near to Similar content/products, just distinguished with the country name etc. one of the page was assigned to me for optimizing. two or three Similar pages are ranked with in top 50 for the main keyword. I updated some on page content to make it more distinguish from others. After some link building, I found that this page still not showing in Google result, even I found the following message on the google. "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 698 already displayed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexgray
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." I clicked to repeat omitted result and found that my targeted url on 450th place in google (before link building this was not) My questions are Is google consider this page low quality or duplicate content? Is there any role of internal linking to give importance a page on other (when they are near to similar)? Like these pages can hurt the whole site rankings? How to handle this issue?0