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Pagination

Pagination is splitting a long list, such as the products of one category, into numbered pages, each with its own address.

How it works

A category page with hundreds of products shows them in parts, so the first screen loads faster. Shoppers move through the list with page numbers, a “Load more” button or infinite scroll. Googlebot, Google’s crawler, generally follows links in the href of <a> elements. It does not click buttons and generally does not run scripts that wait for a user action. Products that can be reached only that way may stay undiscovered.

Google’s guidance is to link each page to the next with an ordinary <a href> link and to consider linking every page back to the first. Each page gets its own URL, such as ?page=2, and its own canonical URL. Google no longer uses rel="next" and rel="prev".

A sitemap or a Merchant Center feed helps Google find products the links miss. How to paginate a category and what else it needs: category page SEO.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop’s “Wine glasses” category holds 120 products, 24 to a page: 120 ÷ 24 = 5 pages, from /wine-glasses to /wine-glasses?page=5. Suppose the shop replaced the page links with a “Load more” button that fetches the next 24 by script. From the category, Googlebot would then generally reach only the first 24 products. It could find the other 96 only through links elsewhere, the sitemap or the feed.

Not to be confused with

  • Faceted navigation — filters and sorting that narrow or reorder one list. Each paginated page shows different products, while a version sorted by price shows the same ones. Google suggests keeping such versions out of the index.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Infinite scroll shows every product, so Google has them all.” Right: Googlebot does not click and generally does not trigger loading that waits for a user action. It needs <a href> links to the rest of the list, a sitemap or a feed.
  • Wrong: “Use #page=2 for the second page.” Right: Google ignores everything after #, so it may take a link that differs only there for a page it already has and not follow it.
  • Wrong: “Pages 2 to 5 repeat the category title, so they need unique titles.” Right: Google says pages in a sequence can share a title and description. It tries to recognise the sequence.

Sources