Use of Rel=Canonical

[motiv8]

I have been pondering whether I am using this tag correctly or not. We have a custom solution which lays out products in the typical eCommerce style with plenty of tick box filters to further narrow down the view.

When I last researched this it seemed like a good idea to implement rel=canonical to point all sub section pages at a 'view-all' page which returns all the products unfiltered for that given section.

Normally pages are restricted down to 9 results per page with interface options to increase that. This combined with all the filters we offer creates many millions of possible page permutations and hence the need for the Canonical tag.

I am concerned because our view-all pages get large, returning all of that section's product into one place.If I pointed the view-all page at say the first page of x results would that defeat the object of the view-all suggestion that Google made a few years back as it would require further crawling to get at all the data?

Alternatively  as these pages are just product listings, would NoIndex be a better route to go given that its unlikely they will get much love in Google anyway?

[Gijsbert]

Check this video for pagination: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=njn8uXTWiGg

When filtering use a canonical tag.

Check how big shops handle those issue's.

[LynnPatchett]

Thats a pretty good video, hadn't seen it before. Check out this article for another good rundown on using rel canonical and prev/next and implementation: http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html using them both alone or in combination depending on the situation is certainly the best way to approach this issue.

[motiv8]

Thanks for your replies, they were very helpful.

After watching and reading I have decided that I need to implement rel="next" and rel="prev" in such a way that we handle multiple filters (facets) and sorting options so "to essentially pretend that only one version of the order/sort variable exists in every situation, and knock out the rest", that way Google will pickup rel=next sets for each facet on its own.

The video made it clear that big view-all pages aren't great if there is a chance they will take time to load.