Myth: add rel=next/prev for paginated categories

Myth: add rel=next/prev for paginated categories

'Q: My category has 12 pages. I should add rel=next and rel=prev, right?'

Short answer: Don't bother — Google stopped using rel=next/prev for indexing back in 2019.

The longer version: this advice was correct for years and never got updated in most blog posts. Google confirmed it hasn't used rel=next/prev as an indexing signal for a long time. Adding it does no harm, but it solves nothing. What actually matters now: each paginated page should be a self-canonical, indexable URL (page 2 canonicals to page 2, not page 1), every product should be reachable through the pagination, and your page 2+ titles can stay simple.

The real mistake people make is canonicaling all pages to page 1 — that hides products on deeper pages from crawlers entirely. Don't do that.

Rule of thumb: let each page stand on its own and make sure crawlers can walk the whole set. Skip rel=next/prev — it's a no-op.

Got an e-com SEO question? Drop it.