| In the context of SEO, what is Pagination? What is its importance in the context of websites dealing in e-commerce? What are the issues that might arise as a result of pagination? Is there a solution for these issues? What is Google's take on the topic of pagination? Does it recommend it for SEO purposes? |
Resource person from Google is Maile Ohye and from other independent web experts. Both have made a research and the results are opposite. It seems like they had tried asking users which they prefer, scrolling or clicking? Just to share some pieces from the Google's article on Pagination. Based on their research, Google found some side effects. One is that Indexing properties, such as links, diluted into several component pages rather than one. And the other one, most relevant pages in the series may not be reflected search results. With these scenarios, Google suggests to use rel="prev" and rel="next" or rel="canonical" so Google could indexed them appropriately. And consolidate to one search result. On the other hand, as other experts say; paging is to break content into semantic or task-related groups of content or categories. Users will be able to find content by what it is, rather than where it is. Most user search tendencies depend on what and not where. Each page with relevant content may scroll. It was imagined that not all users know how to scroll, so programmers considered to keep all content “above the fold.” For efficiency, content users want most at the top. (see Jakob Nielsen's article, "Scrolling and Attention." or Google)
