Pagination, Faceted Nav & Canonical Tags: Fixing the 3 Most Common Crawl Traps

Pagination, faceted navigation, and canonical tags collectively cause 70%+ of the crawl-budget waste I find in audits. Each has been the subject of Google guidance changes that contradicted earlier guidance. This is the working 2026 model — what to do now, and why earlier advice no longer applies.

Table of contents

1. Pagination after rel='next/prev' deprecation · 2. Faceted nav: index, noindex, robots.txt or canonical? · 3. Canonical tags: the 4 ways they fail silently · 4. The pagination + facet combination problem · 5. Patterns that survive guidance changes · 6. Audit checklist · 7. FAQ

Pagination after rel='next/prev' deprecation

Google deprecated rel='next/prev' in 2019 — it had been ignored for years before the announcement. Modern best practice: each paginated page is a self-contained, indexable URL with its own canonical (self-referencing), unique title (Page 2 of N), and 'view all' link if practical. Don't canonical paginated pages to page 1 — that erases the link graph and causes indexation gaps.

Faceted nav: index, noindex, robots.txt or canonical?

Index: 1–2 high-volume facet combinations per category that map to real demand (e.g., color + size). Noindex+follow: long-tail combinations (3+ facets, low search volume). Robots.txt block: parameter combinations with no SEO value at all (sort, currency, session). Canonical: avoid for facet pages — canonical to a non-equivalent page is a wrong-tool fix and Google often ignores it. **The most common mistake: canonicaling all faceted URLs to the category root, which Google interprets as 'these aren't duplicates' and indexes them anyway.**

Canonical tags: the 4 ways they fail silently

1. Canonical to a different URL than the destination's self-canonical (chain conflict). 2. Canonical to a non-equivalent page (Google ignores). 3. Canonical missing from the destination URL itself (signal weakness). 4. Conflicting canonicals between HTML and HTTP header. Verify in Search Console URL Inspection — 'User-declared canonical' should match 'Google-selected canonical'. Mismatches are silent SEO leaks.

The pagination + facet combination problem

/category/?color=red&page=3 creates combinatorial URLs — n facets × m pages = explosion. Solution: noindex+follow paginated faceted URLs (you want crawl to find products, but no need to index page 3 of red shirts), keep page 1 of single-facet combinations indexable, and never index paginated multi-facet combinations. **A 5,000-product site can balloon to 200,000+ URLs through this combination — fix it before scaling content.**

Patterns that survive guidance changes

Self-referencing canonicals on every indexable URL. Sitemap inclusion of canonical URLs only. Internal links pointing to canonical versions (not parameter variants). Robots.txt blocks on URL patterns that have no SEO value regardless of guidance changes (sort, currency, session). These survived rel='next/prev' deprecation and the canonical-handling refinements; they'll survive the next round.

Audit checklist

1. Crawl with Screaming Frog; identify all parameterized URLs. 2. Cross-reference with Search Console 'Crawled — currently not indexed'. 3. For each pattern, decide: index / noindex / canonical / robots-block. 4. Implement consistently in code (not in plugins that other plugins overwrite). 5. Re-audit in 30 days; verify Search Console reports the change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I use 'view all' or paginated for long lists?

View-all if it loads under 3 seconds and isn't paginated for UX reasons. Paginated otherwise. Either works for SEO; pick based on user experience.

Are infinite-scroll pages indexable?

Only if you implement paginated URL fallbacks. Pure JS infinite scroll is invisible to crawlers — products beyond the initial render don't get indexed. Use the History API to update URLs on scroll, with crawlable paginated URLs as fallback.

Does Google still respect noindex+follow as different from noindex,nofollow?

Yes — noindex+follow drops the page from index but preserves link discovery. noindex,nofollow drops both. Use noindex+follow for facet pages whose internal links to products you want preserved.

What's wrong with canonicaling page 2 to page 1?

Google's instruction for paginated content is to treat each page as a separate URL. Canonicaling page 2→1 tells Google 'these are the same content', which is false and causes Google to ignore the canonical or worse — drop page 2's links from the graph.

How do AI engines handle facets and pagination?

Worse than Google — they prefer single canonical URLs and rarely cite paginated facet URLs. Optimize for the canonical category page; facets exist for users, not AI engines.