Canonical Page Question

[oceanstorm]

Hi, I have a question relation to Canonical pages That i need clearing up. I am not sure that my bigcommere website is correctly configured and just wanted clarification from someone in the know.

Take this page for example https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/

Canonical link is https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/

The Rel="next" link is https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?sort=bestselling&page=2 and this page has a canonical tag as  rel='canonical' href='https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?page=2' />

Is this correct as above and working as it should  or should the canonical tag for the second (pagination page) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?page=2     in our source code be saying  rel='canonical' href='https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/' />

[DonnaDuncan]

You should not rel canonical to the first page in a paginated series as subsequent pages are not duplicates of the first.

Here are Google's recommended best practices where it talks about this very thing - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html.

[oceanstorm]

Thanks for your advise..  That  clears up the mis-conception for me since i would have thought the content actually stays the same other than the products shown.    we're having some minor dramas with some parameters being indexed despite having parameters configured in search console. hence i was wondering if the canonical setup was something to do with it.   I'm thinking i try and look into no-index follow system instead for paginated series.