Pagination Markup Checker
Check a paginated page for the canonical and noindex mistakes that hide everything past page one.
About this tool
Examines a paginated page — page two of a blog, a category listing — and checks how it is marked up.
**`rel="next"` and `rel="prev"` do nothing.** Google stopped using them as an indexing signal in 2019 and said so. They are harmless, and half the advice online still calls them required. Their absence is not a finding.
The two things that do matter both hide content.
**Canonicalising page two to page one** declares page two a duplicate. Search engines then treat everything reachable only from page two onward — which on a deep archive is most of the site — as not worth indexing. This is the single most common way an archive disappears from search.
**noindex on page two onward** has the same effect by a different route: the crawler stops following the links out of those pages, and the content behind them is never found.
The pagination links themselves are checked too: a "next" that is a button rather than an anchor is not a link a crawler can follow.
Common questions
Do I still need rel="next" and rel="prev"?
No. Google announced in 2019 that it had not used them for years. They do no harm and no good; keeping them is fine and adding them to a new site is work with no return.
Should page two canonicalise to page one?
No, and this is the important one. It declares page two a duplicate, so search engines stop indexing what is only reachable from it. Each page should be its own canonical.
Should paginated pages be noindexed?
Generally not. A noindexed page is eventually crawled less, and the links out of it are followed less with it — so the content it linked to disappears too. Let them be indexed; they rarely compete with anything.
What about a "view all" page?
Google prefers one if it loads acceptably, and it is worth canonicalising the paginated pages to it — that is a real duplicate relationship rather than an invented one. Where a view-all page would be enormous, keep the pagination and leave each page canonical to itself.