Imagine the following scenario… Excited about buying a new house, you decide to browse for a new kitchen table. So you fire up Google and start searching. You end up clicking through a search listing to view modern kitchen tables and land on the category page of an e-commerce site. But before you start to view all of the great tables they have, you are presented with multiple lengthy paragraphs of content.

As you scroll and scan the description (if you even choose to do that), you notice that the copy is long and doesn’t really help you at all. It’s basically fluff content. For example, maybe it contains the history of modern kitchen tables or maybe it tells you all of the reasons you must have a modern kitchen table (while mentioning different types of modern kitchen tables four or five times). Frustrated, you quickly scroll to get to the actual products.

All of us have come across this situation (and across different types of e-commerce sites). But do we have to? Is it necessary for e-commerce sites to provide long and excessive descriptions that most people won’t even read? And can you rank well without those longer fluff descriptions? That’s a question that many SEOs and site owners must consider while crafting e-commerce category pages and the topic I’m covering in this case study.

If possible, I recommend reading this post from beginning to end to understand the history of the situation, the multiphase approach the site owners employed, the short and long-term impact, and more. But if you are short on time (pun intended), then here’s a table of contents so you can jump around the case study.

Case Study Table of Contents:

• The e-Commerce Description Conundrum.
• Case Study Details.
• When long category descriptions roamed the site.
• The Desktopian Era: Before mobile-first indexing.
• Phase One: Refining the descriptions.
• Phase Two: Hiding shorter descriptions.
• Boom: The March 2019 Broad Core Update.
• Phase Three: Biting the bullet with concise descriptions.
• Final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers.

The e-Commerce Description Conundrum:
While helping e-commerce companies deal with major algorithm updates, and analyzing some sites with long and excessive descriptions, it’s clear that some site owners believe those long descriptions help those pages rank well (or are a key part of helping those pages rank well). Therefore, my feedback about the long and questionable descriptions is something that they might make note of, talk about with their teams, and possibly even brainstorm solutions for improving, but never move on. The fear of losing rankings because of removing long and fluff descriptions is enough to keep those descriptions in place (and sometimes for a very long time).

I get it, change in SEO (especially when the competition is consistently using a certain approach) is tough to deal with and implement. But, frustrating users and potentially sending mixed signals to Google about the core intent of a page could also hinder your efforts. To make things even more risky, you have short-term ranking changes to worry about, but then you have broad core updates to worry about. And those only roll out three to four times per year.

To make matters more complex, it’s also important to understand that short-term testing will not always tell you what a broad core update will bring. I’ve covered that several times in my posts about broad core updates, and Google has also explained that testing just a subset of pages is not enough for their algorithms to determine that site quality has improved enough (if you are working on improving quality overall). So, just tinkering with a few category pages will not reveal what a broad core update could roll in…

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining this: (at 11:41 in the video)

The Case Study:
Below, I’m going to cover a case study of an e-commerce site I helped over time that struggled during several major algorithm updates years ago and finally decided to address their lengthy and excessive descriptions on category pages. And in their place, they added much shorter descriptions that better fit their products, users, and niche overall.

This change was a long time in the making, since I initially brought this up to them several years ago (2015). Being cautious, they took a multi-phase approach (over years) moving from long and fluff category descriptions (that weren’t really valuable for users) to shorter, tighter descriptions that fit their product line and users much better. So, I have data from the short-term changes they implemented, and data over the long-term.

My hope is that this case study can get your wheels spinning about the best possible e-commerce category pages you can provide to prospective customers. And to be clear, that might include longer descriptions, or it might not. It really depends on what your research and testing yields. That’s a good segue to an important disclaimer.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying every site should nuke or replace their long descriptions and I’ll cover the various nuances in this post. But, I do think every site owner should review their category page content, understand what real users want to see, provide the best experience possible, while obviously trying to rank well in the search results. This case is a good example of a site owner taking a multi-phase approach to refining category descriptions over several years and those changes paying off. Read on.

Jumping Back in History: When long category descriptions roamed the site.
Again, the company reached out to me for help after seeing its fair share of volatility during major algorithm updates. They initially reached out to me in 2015 and I heavily analyzed the site (with the goal of using a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation). That’s where my goal is to surface every potential issue that could be impacting the site from a quality standpoint and then site owners working hard to implement as many of those recommendations as possible.

One glaring finding was about their e-commerce category pages. The pages had lengthy (and excessive) descriptions at the top of the page before the actual products were presented. The descriptions were multiple paragraphs long and didn’t really help users.

Also, the descriptions weren’t displayed in full by default. The first paragraph was shown with a “read more” link that would trigger the full content block. I found that strange since the content was supposed to help users (but most of it was being hidden on-load). Also, this was before mobile-first indexing, so hidden content was not given full weight from a ranking perspective. I’ll cover more about that next.

Here is a mockup of what the category descriptions looked like in 2015:
One paragraph on-load with a “read-more” link revealing several paragraphs:

Long description displayed once the “read more” button is clicked:

The Desktopian Era: Before mobile-first indexing.
Before I go any further, it’s important to remember that this was before mobile-first indexing was a thing. So, any content hidden on-load was not given full weight from a ranking perspective. I explained to my client that the hidden content in each description was (probably) not given full weight, along with other key points about what Google had been explaining about e-commerce category pages that contained lengthy, fluff descriptions.

For example, John Mueller has explained many times that e-commerce sites don’t need to add lengthy descriptions in order to rank well. Instead, he said it is important to add some textual content so Google can have context about what the page is about, but that writing a book about the category can actually confuse Google’s algorithms.

In other words, if you provide a lot of informational content about a category, along with product listings, Google’s algorithms can start to wonder if the page is informational or transactional. i.e. Are you selling products or are you providing the history of the category? John has also mentioned the danger of keyword stuffing when you add really long descriptions to e-commerce category pages.

Here are two clips from Google’s John Mueller about e-commerce category pages:
Watch the entire clip. There are some great nuggets of information from John: (at 29:25 in the video)

In this second video, John explains how site owners should focus on providing informative content and place it where users will actually see it. He also covers alt text, captions, and headings: (at 7:18 in the video)

So, the implementation of lengthy (and mostly hidden) category descriptions in 2015 could have been a UX barrier (frustrating users) without much ranking benefit (since the descriptions were mostly hidden). And if Google did take that content into account, it could have been confusing Google about the core point of the page. These were all important things to consider before implementing changes.

Phase One: e-commerce category descriptions refined.
After surfacing many of the e-commerce category descriptions that were long and not extremely valuable, the site owners decided to take action and implement some changes. But, they wanted to test the waters by using a multi-phase approach to changing the descriptions.

They first cut down the descriptions and made them all readable on-load (without needing to click a “read more” button). The new descriptions were about 30% shorter and supported the category better than the longer, fluff descriptions that were replaced.

Their hope was that this change, along with many others they were implementing across the site, would help with Google’s evaluation of quality over the long-term. So even a short-term drop would be ok if the site performed better over the long-term. Now it was time to see how Google would react.

The short-term impact: All clear on the ranking front.
Nothing really changed immediately following the first description change, which was good. The pages still ranked where they were, so it seemed removing all of that extra content didn’t impact the short-term rankings for the pages (or site). Phase one was complete.

Here are some ranking graphs from that timeframe for head terms leading to category urls. Note the site moved to https in 2016 so you will see the http urls switch to https in the graphs below (green to blue). Rankings for the category pages held steady through the description changes and the move to https:

Phase Two: Hide the shorter descriptions.
The next phase was implemented when the site was redesigned the following year. The site owners decided to hide the shorter descriptions behind a “read more” link. And to clarify, the entire description was hidden behind the link (on both desktop and mobile). As you can probably guess, I wasn’t a big fan of this approach. If you have descriptions that are helpful for users, then I think you should provide them on the page by default (especially on desktop). If not, then refine that content so it can be displayed on-load. To clarify, it’s fine on mobile to collapse some of the content behind a UI element, if needed, but the entire description shouldn’t be hidden in my opinion.

Also, the site had not been switched to mobile-first indexing yet, so the content should not have been given full weight from a ranking perspective. My recommendation was to implement changes there and provide more of that description on-load (and to possibly cut down those descriptions even more). The site owners totally understood and said they would figure something out to improve the situation.

Shorter descriptions fully hidden on-load behind a “read more” button:

Shorter descriptions displayed after the “read more” button was clicked:

Note, rankings did not change much when the descriptions were hidden. So, it seems that change didn’t really impact much rankings-wise.

Here are rankings for some head terms leading to those category pages when phase two was implemented:

So far I’ve covered the short-term impact of the description changes, but Google pushes broad core updates several times per year (and they can clearly have a huge impact on sites across the web). Well, a broad core update rolled out in March of 2019 and it was a big one for the site. I’ll cover that next.

March 2019 Broad Core update: Boom, the site surged, and so did many of those pages.
When the March 2019 broad core update rolled out, the site surged overall (and so did many of those pages). It was amazing to see. Now, broad core updates can often impact a site overall (and increase rankings across many pages). That’s due to Google’s site-level quality signals. And as I’ve covered in my posts about broad core updates, Google is evaluating many factors over time and is reevaluating site quality and relevance with broad core updates. It was just interesting to see the site surge, and those category pages jump in rankings.

And, removing 30% of the description content from the original implementation clearly didn’t hurt those pages long-term. Actually, the description content was better for users with more relevant information. Also, by the time the March 2019 core update rolled out, the site had been moved to mobile-first indexing (so the content hidden on-load was given full weight). So the descriptions being hidden behind a “read more” button were given full weight after the move to mobile-first indexing.

Here are some of the increases for category pages during the March 2019 broad core update (head terms that lead to those category pages increasing in rankings based on the update):

Phase Three: Biting the bullet with concise descriptions.
In the final phase of category description changes, the site owners decided to go even further and cut down the descriptions to just a few helpful sentences and provide all of that content on-load (without forcing the user to reveal the description). And in my opinion, it was a much better fit for users, the niche, the categories, etc. You can see below they provided just a short paragraph on each page without hiding the description at all.

This change was implemented in late 2019 and the site has done extremely well since then. And those category pages are also doing extremely well. It was also interesting to see the site’s search visibility surge with the July 2021 core update. So, clearly those new, shorter category descriptions aren’t hurting the site or rankings for those pages.

Many of the category pages rank on page one, with a number of them in the top five listings, and several key category pages are ranking number one in the search results. Again, it’s great to see an improved category page with shorter, but more valuable descriptions, working well. They didn’t need to write a book about the category… they just needed enough content to meet or exceed user expectations (and to give Google enough signals about what the pages were about).

Here is search visibility trending when filtering by category pages on the site. There was a big surge during the December 2020 core update and then more during the July 2021 core update:

Final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers:
Now that I’ve covered the case study, I wanted to end with some final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers. Note, there’s not a “one size fits all” approach when it comes to e-commerce category descriptions. I would use a logical process for implementing changes across your category pages if you currently feel stuck with long and fluff descriptions:

• User Studies: First, run a user study. Ask real users what they want and how they feel about your current descriptions. I’ve covered user studies through the lens of broad core updates many times in my blog posts. Hearing from objective users can be enlightening. Note, you might need to run multiple studies based on your initial results. Again, you never know what you’re going to see and hear while testing your site.
• Short-term testing: Run some short-term testing of category description changes (just keep in mind this will only show the immediate impact rankings-wise and not what impact during broad core updates will look like). As I mentioned earlier, you can’t run a test on a subset of pages to fully understand the impact during broad core updates. But you can gauge the short-term impact of refining category descriptions.
• Taking (an educated) Leap of faith: Do what’s best for your users and your site long-term based on the user study, your understanding of your niche, the short-term testing, etc. And if that means cutting down those long fluff descriptions, and replacing them with shorter, but more valuable content, then so be it. As this case study showed, those pages (and the site overall) can do well without adding excessive descriptions like that… Google has explained this over and over, but I know it’s hard to pull the trigger on something like that. Just remember that Google’s John Mueller did explain that having some relevant text on the page about the category is smart (so Google can have some context about the page). Don’t just add images and call it a day…
• The danger of blindly following the competition: Don’t blindly follow what the competition is doing. I can’t tell you how many site owners have reached out to me over the years after getting hit hard by a broad core update and explaining that they were following one of their top competitors (and it ends up they both got hit during the same core update). As Google’s John Mueller has said many times, some sites might be ranking well despite the bad or risky things they are doing.

Summary – Working towards better e-commerce category descriptions.
I hope you found this case study interesting. I know there’s a long history of debate over e-commerce category descriptions, despite what Google has explained many times. Again, I’m not saying all sites should nuke their long category descriptions. It’s more nuanced than that. But I would start to understand what your users truly want to find on those pages, run user testing, implement short-term changes, and then gauge how that’s working for the site. And if all signs point to cutting down those long descriptions, and replacing them with shorter, but more valuable descriptions, then that might be the best move. And that’s exactly what worked for the site I covered in this post (over both the short and long-term).

GG

{Update 8/13/18: I started noticing a number of ecommerce retailers being released from video carousels when their category or product pages didn’t contain any video (or if the video just supported the main content on the page). The first signs of the change were on Sunday, 8/12/18 and I’m seeing the changes roll out more widely on Monday, 8/13/18. It’s still early, but I hope the changes stick. I included more information and screenshots below. And you can see clicks return via GSC screenshots, which I added on 8/27/18.}

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In June of 2018, Google rolled out video carousels in the desktop SERPs (after having them live in the mobile SERPs for some time). Google had been testing the desktop feature on and off for a while, but finally pulled the trigger and fully rolled it out. And when I say “fully”, I mean the whole enchilada. More about that soon.

It wasn’t long before many people started noticing the change in the search results, which makes complete sense. The feature is hard to ignore based on the massive real estate the carousels take up and their visual nature.

Here’s an example of Google’s new desktop video carousel:

Also, it didn’t take long to notice that Google had seriously turned up the dial on the amount of video carousels surfacing in the search results. For example, the carousels were triggering for many different types of queries, even if it didn’t make much sense to include video carousels for some of those queries.

Heck, they were even triggering for people’s names! I understand that video would make sense for some people, but definitely not for all. It seemed like Google was pushing the new video carousels too hard. Brodie Clark wrote a quick article covering this situation when the carousels first rolled out.

The video carousels are harmless… but are they? Just ask ecommerce retailers:
Some marketers checked out the new video carousels in the desktop SERPs and automatically thought the amazing real estate and visual nature of the carousel would be incredible for sites gaining those listings. But that’s simply not the case for ALL companies.

Ever since the carousels rolled out, Google’s John Mueller has been asked a number of questions about how to get out of the video carousels. Yes, that’s “get out” and not “get in”. Some questions have been asked via Twitter, while others have been asked in John’s webmaster hangout videos. I’ll cover more about Google’s recommendations soon.

Some ecommerce retailers have had a rough time with dealing with the video carousels. For example, some sites have found their way into those video carousels without even having video on their pages! In addition, it seems that many users are simply scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. And that can lead to a serious drop in clicks and conversions.

My guess is that they think the carousels just contain YouTube videos or other video clips versus links to ecommerce pages. And that’s a terrible thing for ecommerce retailers that used to rank in the normal organic listings (the ten blue links). When you rank in the video carousels, you are removed from the organic listings. Not good.

Here are some examples of sites now ranking in video carousels that used to rank in the standard organic listings. The pages ranking in the carousel either don’t have video, or only provide video as a supporting feature. And these are ecommerce category pages, not video pages. I’ll provide some stats next.

SERP for “fidget spinner 1 dollar”. Alibaba ranks multiple times in the carousel:

Ecommerce category page on Alibaba.com containing one small video (bottom-right):

SERP for “jewelry sets for less”. Overstock category page ranking in the carousel:

Ecommerce page on Overstock.com without video:

SERP for “roller shades”. Blinds.com ranking in video carousel multiple times:

Ecommerce category page on Blinds.com without video:

Show me the data! Clicks and CTR fall off a cliff while impressions remain high:
Again, it seems users are scrolling right by the video carousels when searching for products. How bad is the drop in clicks when comparing ranking in the standard organic listings versus the new video carousels? Pretty darn bad.

For example, I’ve included some screenshots from Google Search Console (GSC) of clicks and impressions from an ecommerce retailer that is experiencing this problem. Note, this a B2B ecommerce retailer, so those clicks can turn into big dollars. The average sale for this company is in the thousands of dollars and not tens of dollars.

Notice how impressions remain the same (or surge) while clicks drop off a cliff. This B2B ecommerce retailer began testing adding video schema markup (and video sitemaps) in late April and got caught up in the new video carousels by accident. They first started showing up in the mobile video carousels (which were already live in the SERPs), and then began showing up in the desktop video carousels when they launched in early June. I’ll explain more about what they are doing now soon.

A big drop in clicks while impressions remain strong for ecommerce category pages caught in the video carousel:

John Mueller’s Recommendations – The Current Fix
I mentioned earlier that a number of people have pinged John Mueller via Twitter and via his webmaster hangout videos about how to get out of the video carousels. John was quick to respond and had some recommendations for getting out of the carousel and back into the main SERPs.

John explained that you can disallow crawling of the video file and thumbnail image, or submit a video sitemap file with an expiration date set in the past.

Here is John’s tweet explaining how to get out of a video carousel:

And here is a video from John’s webmaster hangout explaining what you can do:

Again, the B2B ecommerce retailer I mentioned earlier was testing adding video schema markup (and video sitemaps) in late April and got caught up in the new video carousels by accident. After seeing the video carousel problem, they removed all video and video schema markup from the category pages, and then removed the listings from their video xml sitemaps to get removed from the carousels. Unfortunately, none of that worked.

They also tested blocking the video thumbnail image, which didn’t work either. Google ended up creating its own video thumbnails. Then out of desperation, they added video schema and video sitemaps back to add an expiration date set in the past. That didn’t work either. As of today, the site ranks in the video carousels for thousands of keywords. They used to rank in the standard organic listings until the end of April and early May when they started testing adding video. And then the desktop video carousels hit the scene in early June and the situation has gotten even worse.

From a business perspective, the site owner estimates they have lost $300K to $500K in sales since this started happening. Their category pages drive a large percentage of sales for the company, so this is really hurting them financially.

Danger Levels Rise: When all else fails, implement some hacks…
Remember, there is no video on the pages in question, so they had to add a video xml sitemap just to add the expiration date set in the past. Since nothing has worked, they decided to implement some hacks, which is always a dangerous thing to do. I never recommend implementing hacks SEO-wise since they can come back to bite you. That’s potentially happening here as well.

For example, the company started implementing more extreme changes to try and get their listings out of the video carousels. They started 301 redirecting to new urls to see if that would break the connection. That hasn’t seemed to work either (although they did see a few of those pages pop out of the carousels in the short-term).

Yes, they are literally redirecting important category pages that rank well for extremely competitive queries as a last resort. That’s crazy… They also started removing the videos from YouTube (those are the videos that Google was connecting with the site) or making them private. Remember, the videos aren’t on the site, just on YouTube. Those hacks didn’t work either.

Again, with an average sale in the thousands of dollars, and the category pages driving a high percentage of those sales, the company estimates they have lost approximately $300K to $500K since late April or early May when they started ranking in the video carousels.

It just seems crazy that site owners need to jump through hoops while their revenue tanks due to something completely out of their control (and something they didn’t opt into). This ecommerce retailer, in particular, was blindsided in late April and early May when both traffic and revenue dropped off a cliff for important category pages.

A (Better) Fix Is Needed And Brainstorming Possible Solutions
Since video carousels are being populated algorithmically by Google, any change to that algorithm can take a while to hit the SERPs. Google’s John Mueller has explained that recently with regard to Top Stories (another SERP feature that’s gained a lot of attention). John explained that the Top Stories team needs to implement changes to the algo, then heavily test the changes, and then it could roll out down the line. That could take weeks, or even months before hitting the SERPs.

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining algorithmic changes for Top Stories:

My guess is it’s the same way with video carousels. My recommendation to Google would be to first tone down the algorithm triggering the carousels. They should only trigger when Google is extremely confident that users want to see videos for a specific query. And if video carousels are triggered for a query, then Google should make sure that the pages being ranked in the carousel ACTUALLY contain video. As I explained earlier, some ecommerce retailers that don’t have video at all are being included in video carousels. And that’s killing their revenue.

Beyond the algorithmic part, there should be some way for sites to easily opt out of video carousels (either at the site-level or page-level). Whether that’s an option in Google Search Console (GSC), a tag that can be implemented via code, a directive delivered via the header response, or an addition to xml sitemaps, something needs to be done so sites can make sure they don’t become collateral damage with video carousels.

A mockup of GSC reporting showing a page being blocked from showing in video carousels:

**Update 8/13/18: Many ecommerce retails are being released from the video carousels.**
Actually, a number of video carousels are simply being removed from the SERPs for some ecommerce queries. This is outstanding news for ecommerce retailers that were trapped in video carousels when they didn’t even have video on those pages (or if the video just supported the main content). I began noticing these changes on Sunday, 8/12/18, and then saw the changes roll out more widely on Monday, 8/13/18.

For example, I’ll use the queries from earlier in the post to demonstrate what I’m seeing now. I hope this change sticks. I know the B2B ecommerce retailer I documented in this post is ecstatic right now. But the company knows that anything can change in a heartbeat… I’ll post more updates soon. Stay tuned.

1. Blinds.com had a category page for roller shades (without video on it) trapped in a video carousel. It’s free now:

2. Overstock also had a category page without video stuck in a video carousel. Well, not anymore:

3. And Alibaba was released from the video carousel for this query, even though the carousel remained in the search results. But now it’s just populated with YouTube videos (which is accurate):

Clicks Return!
Regarding the e-commerce retailer I documented in this post, it’s been amazing to see their clicks return. When they were trapped in the video carousel, their impressions remained strong, but their clicks dropped off a cliff. Well, as soon as they were released from the carousels, those clicks came back.

Here are three different screenshots from Google Search Console (GSC) demonstrating the changes to key category pages that were once trapped in the carousel. Considering this retailer lost between $600K-800K in revenue due to the problem, they are pretty happy to be back in the standard organic results again.

It’s great to see Google make the right changes here. It took a bit of time, but as I explained earlier, that can happen when Google needs to implement changes, test those changes, etc.

**End Update**
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Summary – Escaping video carousels is harder than you think
For ecommerce retailers mistakenly caught up in video carousels, this situation has been a horrorfest. Some have been blindsided by being included in the new video carousels. And then combine that with users that are scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. And that’s after ranking well in the standard organic search listings where users were clicking their listings. As I documented above, revenue has dropped significantly for those important category pages.

My hope is that Google implements changes both algorithmically (refining the video carousel algorithm) while also providing ways for site owners to opt-out of video carousels (via GSC, meta tags, the header response, or xml sitemaps). If not, the bleeding will continue, sites will continue to implement hacks to try and get out of video carousels, and users will keep scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. I’ll keep monitoring the situation and provide an update if I see any changes roll out. I hope that’s the case. Stay tuned.

GG

 

 

 

Last Updated: April 2021

Update – April 2021
Google’s John Mueller just covered pagination in a Search Central Hangout when asked about the best way to handle pagination for categories. First, he said to determine if you are addressing articles split into multiple urls or category pagination (like what’s found on many e-commerce sites). If you are addressing articles that have been split up into multiple urls, then make sure each url is linked to & indexable. For category pagination, if your urls are crosslinked well on the site, then do what makes sense for you. For example, you can noindex the pagination beyond page one, you can canonicalize those urls to page one, or you can have the urls indexable if you want (with self-referencing canonicals). It totally depends on your specific situation. Here is the video from John:

Update – December 2019: Google provides new guidelines and recommendations
Google’s John Mueller just presented at the Webmaster Conference in Tel Aviv on December 4, 2019. In that presentation, he covered how to handle pagination now that rel next/prev is not being used for indexing purposes. It sounds like more information will be coming via a blog post, but I wanted to provide John’s recommendations here until we have more information. Igal Stolpner tweeted a photo from John’s presentation where he was covering how to best handle pagination now that rel next/prev doesn’t help from an indexing standpoint.

As you can see in the tweet below, John explains to link naturally between pages, to use clean urls (with no or few parameters). He also explained that it’s important to determine the goal of the paginated content and then adjust your strategy based on that.

For example, if it’s paginated content (like an article that’s paginated), then you should link all pages and make them all indexable. But if it’s what he calls “detail links”, like for e-commerce sites, then you can either link all pages, or if all content is findable via cross-linking, then you can just have the first page indexable (or the first few pages in the pagination). You can canonicalize the rest to page one or noindex the rest. Again, I hope Google publishes a post soon with more detail about these recommendations. I’m sure many people will have questions. :)

Update: March 2019: Google just announced that after evaluating its indexing signals, it realized it’s not using rel next/prev as an indexing signal anymore. As of a few days ago, Google was still recommending using rel next/prev to signal to them that pages were part of a set, and that Google should consolidate indexing properties from across that set. But it ends up they haven’t been using rel next/prev for a few years. Crazy, but true.

But don’t feel like you need to remove rel next/prev or radically change your setup. This is not a recent change on Google’s end. So if you’re setup is working for you, then don’t change a thing. Google’s John Mueller has explained that as well. You can read this post on Search Engine Roundtable by Barry Schwartz, which covers the change. And you can watch Google’s John Mueller explain more about the situation in a recent webmaster hangout video.

Here is the video segment (starting at 14:35 and lasting about ten minutes):

My recommendation is to try and fold paginated articles together into one strong url (or at least cut down on the amounts of pages that each article is broken out to). As Google has explained, each page needs to stand on its own. And for pagination for lists of items (like articles in categories, e-commerce product categories, etc.), pagination should still be used like you are hopefully doing now. And then use the right canonicalization strategy based on your situation. You can read more about that in my article below. Just skip the rel next/prev information and focus on the canonicalization sections.

As Google always says, change in constant. At least they informed us about this change, even if it was a few years late. :)

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While helping companies improve overall quality, I’m typically neck deep in performing technical audits and analyzing crawl data. And with many large-scale sites, it’s not uncommon to come across a heavy amount of pagination used throughout those sites. Now, pagination is totally fine to have and can help both users and bots get to your content through organized categories. But, it’s important that your pagination is set up properly from an SEO perspective, so you can get the most bang for your paginated buck. Unfortunately, I’ve seen so many pagination flaws during my audit travels, it’s not even funny.

Based on the botched setups I have seen, and the confusion surrounding pagination, I’ve been jokingly telling clients that I need to write a blog post about how to properly set up rel next/prev when a pagination uses sorting or filtering. Because if I did, I could just point new clients there versus explaining it over and over. So, I finally decided to write it up. :) And yes, I know there are many posts out there about pagination and SEO. But, I wanted to provide one detailing the exact setup that I recommend (based on Google’s official recommendations and my experience helping many large-scale sites that employ pagination).

This post will cover a number of topics under the pagination umbrella, including how to set up rel next/prev, how to handle sorting and filtering parameters, and how to combine rel canonical with rel next/prev. My hope is that this post can clear up some of the confusion surrounding pagination and SEO.

Your Goal and How Google Should Process The Setup
First, let me quickly explain why this is important. When using pagination, you often have several pages of content within a specific category. For example, pagination is prevalent on ecommerce sites that might have hundreds of products under a certain category. Or you might have sites with reviews that might have dozens or more reviews per product.

From an SEO perspective, it might not sound great to have dozens of category pages indexed by Google. But you absolutely could, as long as you know Google is handling those pages properly. The catch is that you should use rel next/prev in the code of your component pages so Google can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. That means Google can treat your paginated set as one, versus dozens of separate pages containing a list of products. And when Google does that, it can surface the right page from the paginated set in the SERPs based on query, but it will still treat the paginated set as one (signals-wise).

Warning: Don’t Canonicalize All Component Pages To The First Page! Set Up Rel Canonical Correctly
Also, and this is important to understand, if you canonicalize all component pages to the first page in your pagination, then Google can’t index any of the additional content. So you are diminishing the power of the paginated set by canonicalizing each component page to the first page. It’s simply not the right setup. I’ll cover how to use rel canonical the right way with pagination soon.

A Note About Google Resources for Pagination and Rel next/prev
Before we begin, I wanted to mention that there are some great resources from Google explaining more about this topic, and I highly recommend checking them out. For example, there’s a great video from former Googler Maile Ohye covering how to use rel next/prev in detail. And then Google has written several blog posts about pagination, including one about common mistakes that site owners make when implementing rel canonical on their sites. There’s a part about not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. Between my post today and those resources, you should be ready to rock and roll pagination-wise. Let’s get started.

How To Properly Set Up Rel Next/Prev with Filtering: Step-by-step
It’s best if I use an example that’s easy to understand, so let’s say we have an ecommerce site named “Glenn’s Baseball Gloves”. Hey, I coach baseball and I’m helping my players choose the right gear now. :) Let’s set up the pagination for a category of pre-broken in baseball gloves. Here we go!

1. Our Ecommerce Category
The category url is https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm. The category contains 75 products and we’re going to provide fifteen gloves per page. So, we’ll have five component pages in the pagination. Page two will have the following url: https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2. Then page=3, page=4, etc.

2. Filtering or Sorting The Pagination
We will also provide sorting for our pagination. To keep this simple, let’s provide sorting by price. So if the user chooses to sort “Price High-To-Low”, the pagination will reorder the gloves and show the most expensive gloves first. The sorting parameter will be price=X, where X could be high or low.

So we might end up with a url that looks like this:

https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high

3. Rel next/prev
This is the easy part. You will need to add rel next/prev tags in the head of each component page that provides the next url in the pagination, and the previous. The only exceptions are the first and last pages in the pagination. That’s because the first page will have a rel next tag, but won’t have a previous tag. And the last page will have a rel prev tag, but won’t have a next tag. All other component pages should contain both rel next and prev.

For our root category page https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm, we’ll use the following in the head of the document:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2” />

Remember, the first page will not contain a rel=”prev” tag since there isn’t a previous page!

And our page=2 url will contain the following tags in the head of the document:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3” />

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

Important note: I’ve seen many sites use ?page=1 in the rel prev tag when pointing back to the root category page, when that’s not the actual url. The url actually doesn’t contain any parameters, so it’s just https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm without page=1.

You should complete the tags for the remaining component pages and then include just a rel prev tag on the last page (since there’s not a “next” url). For example, the final page in the pagination (page 5) would contain the following rel prev tag in the head of the document.

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4” />

4. Rel canonical
When setting up the pagination, I highly recommend using self-referencing canonical tags on each component page. Rel canonical and rel next/prev are separate concepts and can be used together on the same url. Again, these should be self-referencing canonical tags for each component page.

The root page should contain a self-referencing canonical tag, page=2 url should as well, so on and so forth. Remember, we want Google to index each of the pages so it can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. Don’t simply canonicalize all component pages to the first page. That’s not the right setup. Google even lists that in their common mistakes blog post for rel canonical! See screenshot below.

Don’t do this!

Here is an example of what we should implement based on our fictitious website:

The root category url https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm would contain the following rel canonical tag:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

and then the second url in our pagination https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2 would contain:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2”>

Again, DO NOT canonicalize all component pages to the first page in the pagination. That’s not the proper setup (as documented above)! And rel canoncial should contain the url with the page parameter, but not contain any sorting or filtering parameters. I’ll cover more about that next.

5. Handling Sorting or Filtering In The Pagination
This part seems to confuse a lot of people, just based on the number of parameters being handled and how it ties to rel canonical and rel next/prev. If filtering or sorting parameters are provided, then you should include them in rel next/prev tags, but not include them in rel canonical. Rel canonical should only contain the core url for the component page without the filtering parameters. Google’s Maile Ohye explained this in her video about pagination.

Also, it’s important to keep a consistent order for your parameters. In my opinion, you should always start with the core url and page parameter (page=X). Then layer on filtering parameters, but keep the order consistent. Don’t use page=X&price=Y&size=Z on one component page and then page=X&size=Y&price=Z on the next. Or worse, don’t move the page=X parameter to after the filters! Make it easy for Google to understand the structure so it can consolidate indexing properties without running into trouble.

For our example, let’s say a user sorted by price, the first page would contain the following rel next tag and rel canonical tag:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

Then page 2 would contain:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?price=high” />

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2” />

And page 3 would contain:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high” />

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3” />

Notice how rel next prev carries the sorting parameters from one url to the next, while rel canonical only references the core url. We would follow the same formula for page four. And the final page (which is page 5 in our example) would contain the following tags. Remember, the final page would not contain a rel next tag since there isn’t another page in the pagination:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=5” />

Rel=Got It?
And that’s it! Now you are handling rel next/prev correctly on each component page of the pagination, as well as rel canonical. And you are also providing consistent sorting parameters via rel next/prev. And you’re not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page (which is the wrong way to go).

Now Google can understand the structure of your pagination, consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set, treat the pagination as one signals-wise, and then surface the correct url in the SERPs based on query. Groovy. :)

A Note About Indexation
You will probably see indexation increase when checking the Index Status report in Google Search Console (GSC) as Google crawls and indexes the component pages in your pagination. This is especially true for those sites that were once canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. This is totally normal to see, so don’t freak out if it starts to rise. Indexation should level off as Google indexes all of your component pages.

Summary – Consolidate Indexing Properties With The Right Pagination Setup
The next time you’re faced with providing a heavy amount of pagination by category, you can use the setup I covered in this post. It’s based on Google’s official recommendations and it’s something I have helped clients with many times in the past. So don’t fall victim to common pagination problems. Instead, let Google crawl and index all of your component pages, but tie them together via rel next/prev. And then use rel canonical to send clear signals about which pages should be indexed. Pagination shouldn’t be scary and I hope this post made the setup a little less intimidating… Now paginate away!

GG