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
    2183
    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

                      • 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
                      • andyheath

                        Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether

                        Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
                        0
                      • MyPetWarehouse

                        Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'

                        Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse
                        0
                      • CostumeD

                        On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile

                        We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD
                        0
                      • friendoffood

                        Alt tag for src='blank.gif' on lazy load images

                        I didn't find an answer on a search on this, so maybe someone here has faced this before. I am loading 20 images that are in the viewport and a bit below.  The next 80 images I want to 'lazy-load'.  They therefore are seen by the bot as a blank.gif file.  However, I would like to get some credit for them by giving a description in the alt tag.  Is that a no-no?  If not, do they all have to be the same alt description since the src name is the same?  I don't want to mess things up with Google by being too aggressive, but at the same time those are valid images once they are lazy loaded, so would like to get some credit for them. Thanks!  Ted

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                        0
                      • kchandler

                        What Happens If a Hreflang Sitemap Doesn't Include Every Language for Missing Translated Pages?

                        As we are building a hreflang sitemap for a client, we are correctly implementing the tag across 5 different languages including English. However, the News and Events section was never translated into any of the other four languages. There are also a few pages that were translated into some but not all of the 4 languages. Is it good practice to still list out the individual non-translated pages like on a regular sitemap without a hreflang tag? Should the hreflang sitemap include the hreflang tag with pages that are missing a few language translations (when one or two language translations may be missing)? We are uncertain if this inconsistency would create a problem and we would like some feedback before pushing the hreflang sitemap live.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler
                        0
                      • Sika22

                        PDF or HTML Page?

                        One of our sales team members has created a 25 page word document as a topical page.  The plan was to make this into an html page with a table of contents.  My thoughts were why not make it a pdf?  Is there any con to using a PDF vs an html page?  If the PDF was properly optimized would it perform just as well?  The goal is to have folks click back to our products and hopefully by after reading about how they work.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika22
                        0
                      • HD_Leona

                        Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

                        Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
                        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.