Paginated series vs a 'view all' page — which should be canonical?

Paginated series vs a 'view all' page — which should be canonical?

'Q: rel=next/prev is dead. Should I canonical paginated pages to a view-all instead?'

Short answer: Self-canonical each paginated page if the list is long; use a view-all canonical only when 'all' loads fast and isn't huge.

The longer version: Since Google dropped rel=next/prev support, the cleanest pattern is each page (/page/2, /page/3) self-canonicalizing — Google treats them as a discoverable series and finds your deep products. Don't canonical page 2 back to page 1; that hides page-2 products.

The view-all canonical works only when a single 'show all' page is genuinely usable — say under a few hundred items and a fast load. With 5,000 products, a view-all is a slow, bloated page that hurts Core Web Vitals more than it helps.

Example: 40-item blog archive? view-all canonical is fine. 4,000-product category? Self-canonical paginated pages, each linking products.

Rule of thumb: Short list → view-all. Deep catalog → self-canonical pagination.

Got an e-com SEO question? Drop it.