Failure mode: indexing page 2 through page 90 of every listing

Failure mode: indexing page 2 through page 90 of every listing

Paginated listing pages (?page=2…) get crawled and indexed as separate thin URLs that compete with page 1 and bloat the index. Marking them all canonical-to-page-1 is also wrong — it hides the deeper items from discovery.

Pagination SOP:
— Step 1. Owner: SEO. Decide the model: self-canonical each page (let them index, distinct content) OR noindex,follow pages 2+ (keep crawl path, drop from index). Pick one per template, document it.
— Step 2. Owner: dev. Implement consistently; never mix self-canonical with canonical-to-page-1.
— Step 3. Owner: dev. Ensure rel links / crawl path to deep pages survive so items aren't orphaned.
— Step 4. Owner: SEO. Crawl 200 paginated URLs. Gate: directive matches the documented model on 100 percent.

Guardrail: pagination keeps the crawl path open while keeping thin pages out of the index.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.