Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Paginated Pages Which Shouldnt' Exist..

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Paginated Pages Which Shouldnt' Exist..

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    9
    2179
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • BeckyKey
      BeckyKey last edited by

      Hi

      I have paginated pages on a crawl which shouldn't be paginated:

      https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs

      My crawl shows:

      <colgroup><col width="377"></colgroup>
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=3 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=4 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=5 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=6 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=7 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=8 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=9 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=10 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=11 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=12 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=13 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=14 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=15 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=16 |
      | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=17 |

      Where is this coming from?

      Thank you

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Everett
        Everett @BeckyKey last edited by

        You will also have to get those URLs out of the index once you fix the rel next/prev issue. In order to do that effectively, they should return a 404 or 410 status code in the HTTP header so Google knows that they no longer exist (even though they never really did in the first place). Otherwise, it's what is known as a "soft 404" in which the page doesn't really exist, but returns a 200 (OK) status code, which is confusing to Google if you don't want them indexed.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Nigel_Carr
          Nigel_Carr @BeckyKey last edited by

          Hi Becky

          I can see chairs:

          https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs

          But the paginated versions above are not in there. (can you see them?)

          All you need to do is remove this directive for pages without a page 2: rel="next" href="https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2" > as there is no page 2 for chairs.

          Regards

          Nigel

          9e989787-5595-4deb-92b6-ce2220b21197

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • BeckyKey
            BeckyKey last edited by

            Hi Nigel

            Thanks for jumping in. I'm confused as I have found the pages on my screaming frog crawl?

            This page https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs shouldn't have any pagination as there are no additional pages, but there is rel=next in the source code...

            Now I'm a bit confused!

            Becky

            Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BeckyKey
              BeckyKey @TylerReardon last edited by

              Yes I've just gone through every top level page too & pagination is awful, so I'm compiling a list and a case to push it.

              It's pretty bad across the site, so I'll push for this to be updated. I find new issues with it all the time..

              Thanks for your help!

              Everett 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • TylerReardon
                TylerReardon @BeckyKey last edited by

                Yes exactly. Even though the pages don't exist to the user, they still technically exist. If I were you, I'd take a very deep look at pagination on your site. If this is happening at scale, then fixing it could be a major improvement to your site. I took a look and it seems to be happening on all your top-level category pages like Chairs, Office Furniture, Shelving & Racking, etc.

                These paginated pages are essentially a bunch of duplicate pages of your main category pages, each with a self-referencing canonical (which is the proper way to set up pagination). So Google could be extremely confused about which one to rank. In most cases, Google will rank page 1 because the use of rel="next"/rel="prev" is essentially telling Google that page 1 is the canonical version. However, you're still opening yourself up to the possibility of Google crawling all of these duplicate pages which is a huge waste on your crawl budget.

                Hope that helps!

                BeckyKey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BeckyKey
                  BeckyKey @TylerReardon last edited by

                  Hi

                  Thank you both.

                  We do have issues with our pagination which I've raised with developers, but it's taking forever to sort out. I'll flag this as well.

                  So even though the content on the paginated pages for Chairs doesn't exist we still need to remove the tags on these - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=10

                  TylerReardon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • TylerReardon
                    TylerReardon last edited by

                    If you view your source code, you'll notice you are actually using rel="next" and rel="prev" on the main category page (https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs). This is why you (and most likely Googlebot as well) are crawling these paginated pages. Even though you don't have links to the paginated pages on the main category page, they still exist and you're giving crawlers the directive (rel next / rel prev) to crawl them.

                    If you remove rel="next" on the category home page, that should help but you should really remove rel="next" and rel="prev" on the paginated pages as well. Unless you do that, Google will still find them and crawl them because they're aware these pages exist and they're likely indexed.

                    Here's a great resource on understanding pagination as well as the correct use of rel="next" and rel="prev" from Maile Ohye at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njn8uXTWiGg

                    Hope this helps!
                    Cheers!
                    -Tyler

                    a7jXKhU

                    BeckyKey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • WebMarkets
                      WebMarkets last edited by

                      Nice website by the way. It looks very professional. And your 49 DA is very impressive.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • Wavelength_International

                        Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?

                        I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International
                        0
                      • Jason.Capshaw

                        Is Google able to see child pages in our AJAX pagination?

                        We upgraded our site to a new platform the first week of August.  The product listing pages have a canonical issue.  Page 2 of the paginated series has a canonical pointing to page 1 of the series.  Google lists this as a "mistake" and we're planning on implementing best practice (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html)  We want to implement rel=next,prev. The URLs are constructed using a hashtag and a string of query parameters.  You'll notice that these parameters are  &parameter:value vs &parameter=value. /products#facet:&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:&pageView:grid&minPrice:&maxPrice:&pageSize:& None of the URLs are included in any indexed URLs because the canonical is the page URL without the AJAX parameters.  So these results are expected. Screamingfrog only finds the product links on page 1 and doesn't move to page 2.  The link to page 2 is AJAX.  ScreamingFrog only crawls AJAX if its in Google's deprecated recommendations as far as I know. The "facet" parameter is noted in search console, but the example URLs are for an unrelated URL that uses the "?facet=" format.  None of the other parameters have been added by Google to the console.  Other unrelated parameters from the new site are in the console. When using the fetch as Google tool, Google ignores everything after the "#" and shows only the main URL.  I tested to see if it was just pulling the canonical of the page for the test, but that was not the case. None of the "#facet" strings appear in the Moz crawl I don't think Google is reading the "productBeginIndex" to specify the start of a page 2 and so on.  One thought is to add the parameter in search console, remove the canonical, and test one category to see how Google treats the pages. Making the URLs SEO friendly (/page2.../page3) is a heavy lift. Any ideas how to diagnose/solve this issue?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jason.Capshaw
                        0
                      • TrueluxGroup

                        Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different

                        Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
                        https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
                        and the other page is
                        https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
                        0
                      • TjeerdvZ

                        Hreflang and paginated page

                        Hi, I can not seem to find good documentation about the use of hreflang and paginated page when using rel=next , rel=prev
                        Does any know where to find decent documentatio?, I could only find documentation about pagination and hreflang when using canonicals on the paginated page. I have doubts on what is the best option: The way tripadvisor does it:
                        http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-oa390-Corsica-Hotels.html
                        Each paginated page is referring to it's hreflang paginated page, for example: So should the hreflang refer to the pagined specific page or should it refer to the "1st" page? in this case:
                        http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-Corsica-Hotels.html Looking foward to your suggestions.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
                        0
                      • InmediaDK

                        My landing pages don't show up in the SERPs, only my frontpage does.

                        I am having some trouble with getting the landing pages for a clients website to show up in the SERPs. 
                        As far as I can see, the pages are optimized well, and they also get indexed by Google. The website is a danish webshop that sells wine, www.vindanmark.com Take for an instance this landing page, http://www.vindanmark.com/vinhandel/ 
                        It is optimzied for the keywords "Vinhandel Århus".   Vinhandel means "Winestore" and "Århus" is a danish city. As you can see, I manage to get them at page 1 (#10), but it's the frontpage that ranks for the keyword. And this goes for alle the other landing pages as well. But I can't figure out, why the frontpage keep outranking the landingpages on every keyword. 
                        What am I doing wrong here?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InmediaDK
                        1
                      • MBASydney

                        Date of page first indexed or age of a page?

                        Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney
                        0
                      • JennaCMag

                        Why is my Crawl Report Showing Thousands of Pages that Do Not Exist?

                        Hi, I just downloaded a Crawl Summary Report for a client's website. I am seeing THOUSANDS of duplicate page content errors. The overwhelming majority of them look something like this: ERROR: http://www.earlyinterventionsupport.com/resources/parentingtips/development/parentingtips/development/development/development/development/development/development/parentingtips/specialneeds/default.aspx This page doesn't exist and results in a 404 page. Why are these pages showing up? How do I get rid of them? Are they endangering the health of my site as a whole? Thank you, Jenna <colgroup><col width="1051"></colgroup>
                        |   |

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JennaCMag
                        0
                      • RichBestSEO

                        Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?

                        Hello, I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy. eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/ eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/ etc... I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective? Kind Regs, RB

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichBestSEO
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.