Pagination and Infinite Scroll Without Losing Pages
How to structure paginated content so everything gets discovered and indexed.
Technical SEO
What changed
Google retired support for rel=next and rel=prev as an indexing signal. Paginated pages are now treated as individual URLs. That means each page needs to stand on its own and be reachable.
The reliable structure
Self-referencing canonicals on each paginated page, not canonicals pointing to page one. Crawlable anchor links between pages. Unique titles including the page number. Never noindex paginated pages, which orphans everything they link to.
Infinite scroll
Infinite scroll without a paginated fallback hides most of your content permanently. Implement paginated URLs beneath the scroll experience so crawlers have a path even when users do not use it.
Key takeaways
- rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used for indexing
- Self-reference canonicals on paginated pages, not page one
- Never noindex paginated pages; it orphans their links
- Infinite scroll needs a crawlable paginated fallback
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