Learn · Technical SEO · Beginner
Learn to check that every page of a long list has its own address, its own canonical and a real link to the next page.
When a list is too long for one page, a site splits it over several pages, with links such as next, previous and page numbers. This is called pagination. Some sites use a load more button or infinite scroll instead, which add items to the same page as you click or scroll.
This guide shows you how to check that each page of a list has its own address, a canonical that points to itself, and a link a crawler can follow to the next page.
Google says it generally finds pages by following the addresses in the href of anchor elements, and that its crawlers do not click buttons or run scripts that need a user action. A load more button on its own may therefore leave later items without a link to follow. Google also says each page in a sequence should have its own address and its own canonical, and that a fragment, the part after a #, should not be used for page numbers. See Google’s pagination documentation.
Click through the list to page two and page three. Write down the full address of each page. Google says each page should have a unique address, for example one that ends in ?page=2.
You will know it worked when You have three different full addresses, and none of them differs only by text after a # sign.
Right-click the next link and choose Inspect, or find it in View page source. A link a crawler can follow is an <a> element with an href holding an address. A button or a link without an href is not.
You will know it worked when You can see an anchor with an href that leads to page two.
Open View page source on page two and search for canonical. Google says not to use the first page as the canonical for the sequence and to give each page its own canonical.
You will know it worked when Page two’s canonical holds page two’s own address, not page one’s.
If the list uses a load more button or infinite scroll, look in the page source for plain links to numbered addresses. Google says an indexable version gives each chunk of content its own address and links to them in sequence. See Google’s guidance on lazy-loaded content.
You will know it worked when You have found links to numbered addresses in the source, or noted that there are none.
If the list can be sorted or filtered, change a sort option and note how the address changes, for example to ?order=price. Google suggests keeping such variants out of its index, using a noindex tag or robots.txt rules.
You will know it worked when You know whether sorted versions have their own addresses, and whether the source of one holds a noindex tag.
Paste page two’s full address into the inspection bar. Under Page indexing, compare the Google-selected canonical with the address you wrote down. Google says that field comes only from the indexed data. See the URL Inspection help.
You will know it worked when You can see whether Google’s chosen canonical matches page two’s own address, or that page two is not indexed yet.
Edit the address to a page number far beyond the last page, such as 99. Google says a page that cannot be found should return a 404 status. Check what the site does. See the status code guidance.
You will know it worked when You know whether the made-up page number returns a not-found page or an empty page.
Tell Dean which list is split over pages and what page two’s address and canonical look like. A reply from Dean is how it starts, not a sales sequence.
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