Google confirmed in 2019 that it does not use rel=”prev” and rel=”next” as a signal, and hadn’t been using it for ranking purposes for some time even before formally removing it from its official documentation. In its place, Google relies on its general content-understanding systems and its analysis of internal linking patterns to recognize that a set of pages forms a paginated series: consistent, crawlable sequential links (page 2, page 3, and so on) and predictable URL patterns are what allow Google to infer the relationship, not any dedicated markup, because there isn’t one anymore.
What actually happened in 2019, and why it changed less than people expected
rel=”prev”/”next” was originally introduced as an annotation specifically to help Google understand that a series of URLs represented a paginated sequence of one larger set of content, useful for consolidating indexing signals and helping Google decide how to treat component pages of something like a paginated article or product listing. In 2019, Google’s Search Central team confirmed, through public statements from the Search team including Mueller, that this markup was no longer used, and had in fact stopped mattering as a signal well before the announcement itself. The practical impact of the announcement was smaller than it might sound, because Google’s systems had already been relying primarily on other means of understanding pagination for a while by that point; the formal deprecation was Google catching its documentation up to already-current practice rather than a sudden behavioral change site owners needed to react to.
What Google uses instead
Without a dedicated annotation, Google’s understanding of paginated series relies on the same general mechanisms it uses to understand site structure and content relationships elsewhere: crawlable internal links connecting the pages in sequence, and consistent, predictable URL patterns across the series (a shared base path with an incrementing page parameter or path segment, for instance). When a set of pages is linked together in a clear sequential pattern, page 1 linking to page 2, page 2 linking to page 1 and page 3, and so on, Google’s crawlers can traverse and recognize that structure the same way they recognize any other set of internally linked, topically related pages. There’s no separate “pagination system” being invoked; it’s the same general link-graph and content-understanding machinery Google uses everywhere, applied to a structure that happens to represent a paginated sequence.
This means the things that actually matter for pagination now are the same things that matter for crawlability and site structure generally: making sure every page in the series is genuinely reachable via a normal crawlable link (not requiring JavaScript interaction Google might not execute, not hidden behind infinite scroll with no crawlable link equivalent), keeping URL patterns consistent and logical across the series, and not blocking any page in the sequence from being crawled or indexed via robots.txt or noindex, which would break the chain Google is trying to follow.
What this doesn’t mean
It’s worth being precise about what didn’t change. Google didn’t introduce a replacement markup or a new dedicated pagination signal to take rel=prev/next’s place, there isn’t one, and any claim that a specific new tag or schema type is “the modern equivalent” isn’t accurate. The guidance is genuinely just “make sure your pagination is crawlable and coherent through normal linking and URL structure,” which is a return to the same general principles that govern crawlability everywhere on a site, not a new specialized system. It’s also worth noting this is distinct from separate questions like whether to use “view all” pages, whether to canonicalize paginated pages back to page one (Google has generally advised against blanket-canonicalizing all paginated pages to page one, since each page in a genuine series typically contains distinct content worth its own indexing), or how to handle faceted navigation, all of which involve their own separate considerations beyond pure pagination signaling.
What to do about it
Audit paginated sections for straightforward crawlability rather than looking for a markup fix: confirm every page in a series is linked via a normal, crawlable anchor tag reachable without requiring JavaScript execution Google might not perform, verify the URL pattern is consistent and logical across the sequence, and check that no page in the middle of a series is accidentally excluded via robots.txt, noindex, or a broken link that would sever Google’s ability to traverse the full set. If a paginated series isn’t being indexed or understood correctly, the diagnostic starting point is almost always a crawlability or linking problem in the sequence itself, not a missing annotation, since the annotation that used to exist for this purpose no longer factors into Google’s systems at all.
