Pagination with rel="next" and rel="prev"

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Much like rel="canonical" acts a strong hint for duplicate content, you can now use the HTML link elements rel="next" and rel="prev" to indicate the relationship between component URLs in a paginated series. Throughout the web, a paginated series of content may take many shapes—it can be an article divided into several component pages, or a product category with items spread across several pages, or a forum thread divided into a sequence of URLs. Now, if you choose to include rel="next" and rel="prev" markup on the component pages within a series, you're giving Google a strong hint that you'd like us to:

  • Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, from the component pages/URLs to the series as a whole (that is, links should not remain dispersed between page-1.html, page-2.html, etc., but be grouped with the sequence).
  • Send users to the most relevant page/URL—typically the first page of the series.
Pages suitable for rel=prev and rel=next annotations
The relationship between component URLs in a series can now be indicated to Google through rel="next" and rel="prev".

There's an exception to the rel="prev" and rel="next" implementation: If, alongside your series of content, you also offer users a view-all page, or if you're considering a view-all page, please see our post on View-all in search results for more information. Because view-all pages are most commonly preferred by searchers, we do our best to surface this version when appropriate in results rather than a component page (component pages are more likely to surface with rel="next" and rel="prev").

If you don't have a view-all page or you'd like to override Google returning a view-all page, you can use rel="next" and rel="prev" as described in this post.

Examples of pages that have a view-all version
For information on paginated configurations that include a view-all page, please see our post on View-all in search results.

Outlining your options

Here are three options for a series:

  1. Leave whatever you have exactly as-is. Paginated content exists throughout the web and we'll continue to strive to give searchers the best result, regardless of the page's rel="next"/rel="prev" HTML markup—or lack thereof.
  2. If you have a view-all page, or are considering a view-all page, see our post on View-all in search results.
  3. Hint to Google the relationship between the component URLs of your series with rel="next" and rel="prev". This helps us more accurately index your content and serve to users the most relevant page (commonly the first page). Implementation details below.

Implementing rel="next" and rel="prev"

If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let's get started! Let's say you have content paginated into the URLs: 

http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4

On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you'd include in the <head> section: 

<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2" />

On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2: 

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1" />
<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3" />

On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3: 

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2" />
<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4" />

And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4: 

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3" />

A few points to mention:

  • The first page only contains rel="next" and no rel="prev" markup.
  • Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel="next" and rel="prev" markup.
  • The last page only contains markup for rel="prev", not rel="next".
  • rel="next" and rel="prev" values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the <link /> tag). And, if you include a <base/> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.
  • rel="next" and rel="prev" only need to be declared within the <head> section, not within the document <body>.
  • We allow rel="previous" as a syntactic variant of rel="prev" links.
  • rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: 
    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2" />
<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1&sessionid=123" />
<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3&sessionid=123" />
  • rel="prev" and rel="next" act as hints to Google, not absolute directives.
  • When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.

More information can be found in our Help Center, or join the conversation in our Webmaster Help Forum!

Written by Benjia Li and Joachim Kupke, Software Engineers, Indexing Team