<b>Stop building rel=next/prev. It's been dead for years.</b>

<b>Stop building rel=next/prev. It's been dead for years.</b>
Inherited a site stuffed with <code>rel=next</code> and <code>rel=prev</code>. Google deprecated those signals back in 2019. They do nothing.
The real pagination play:
— Each page 2, 3, 4 self-canonicals to itself. NOT to page 1. Canonical-to-page-1 hides your deep products from the index.
— Keep paginated pages indexable if they hold unique products. Noindex them only if they're truly thin.
— Make sure every paginated URL is crawlable via a real <code>&lt;a href&gt;</code>, not a JS "load more" button the bot can't click.
— Link page 1 from the category nav. Pages 2+ get found by crawling.
Watch infinite scroll. If there's no static paginated URL behind it, those products live nowhere Googlebot can reach.