Pagination Tag and Canonical

[seoperad]

Once and for all - I would really like to get a few opinions regarding what is the best method working for you.

For most of the all timers in here there's no need to introduce the pagination tag. The big question for me is regarding the canonical tag in those case. There are 2 options, as far as I consider:

Options 1 will be implementing canonical tag directing to the main category page:

For instance:

example.com/shoes

example.com/shoes?page=2

example.com/shoes?page=3

In this case all the three URL's will direct to the main category which is

example.com/shoes

Option 2 - using self-referral canonical for every page.

In this case  - example.com/shoes?page=2 will direct its canonical tag to example.com/shoes?page=2 and so on.

What's the logic behind this? To make sure there are no floating pages onsite. If I'll use canonical that directs to the main category (option 1) then these pages won't get indexed and techniclly there won't be any indexed links to these pages.

Your opinion?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Shahar,

The best resource for you to look at is here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

That will answer your questions perfectly, but in what you say here "using self-referral canonical for every page." this is not correct when using pagination here.

"Specifying a rel=canonical from page 2 (or any later page) to page 1 is not correct use of rel=canonical, as these are not duplicate pages. Using rel=canonical in this instance would result in the content on pages 2 and beyond not being indexed at all."

I hope this helps.

-Andy

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Have you read through Google's Indicate pagination resource? This is a quite comprehensive resource and can give you a bit more direction in what you want to implement. Moz also has a great resource that can help in this area as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[LesleyPaone]

My view differs from the other views posted. I prefer to rel canonical the paginated pages to the index. The reason why is for user experience and landing page optimization. A paginated page generally if landed on from a search results in a poor user experience. Plus generally in an ecommerce shop the products are changing and moving around so it is hard to rank for anything in particular. So I have just dropped trying to rank them. I simply point the canonical on the paginated pages to the main category root.

One thing I also do is have a description and image on the category root as well, I hide that on the paginated pages to and opt for a more product centric view.

The canonical pointing back to the main category landing page can been seen in a lot of ecommerce sites these days. Like walmart, http://www.walmart.com/browse/home-improvement/air-conditioners/1072864_133032_133026?page=2&cat_id=1072864_133032_133026  This should link you to page 2 of the air conditioners category, but the canonical will take you to page 1.

You can observe the same thing with Target.com as well. Theirs is a little bit harder to paste since they use a filtered type result on their category pages, but here is one http://www.target.com/sb/car-seats-baby/-/N-5xtlxZ55pdd#navigation=true&category=5xtlx&searchTerm=&view_type=medium&sort_by=bestselling&faceted_value=55pdd&offset=60&pageCount=60&response_group=Items&isLeaf=false&parent_category_id=5xtly&custom_price=false&min_price=from&max_price=to  It cannonicals back to the main category page, even though it is actually a sub category.

As far as I know Amazon is one of the only companies that still canonicals to paginated pages.

[seoperad]

As I claimed, it's a discussion not yes or no answer. Here are my two cents -

I usually use the self-referral canonical to avoid and more duplicates, just like any other pages.

I'll give you a quick example:

Lets say you have this page: example.com/shoes?p=1

In case I use the other filters onsite (very common to eCommerce sites) it might look like this:

example.com/shoes?p=1&type=nike&color=red

To avoid this I use the self-referral canonical anyway.