rel=next and rel=prev: Crawl Audit check 67

Short answer: rel="next" and rel="prev" are link tags that tell search engines which page comes before and after this one in a series, such as page 2 of a blog or a product category. Google stopped using them, though other search engines may still. Check 67 warns only when the page looks paginated and has neither tag. If you see that warning, the more important fix for Google is ordinary links between the pages and a canonical on each page pointing to itself (check 68).

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: a <link rel="next"> or <link rel="prev"> is present.
• Pass: the page doesn't look paginated, so nothing is needed.
• Warning: the page looks paginated, but has neither tag.

Crawl Audit treats a page as paginated if its address has ?page= or ?p= followed by a number, or if it has an element whose class contains "pagination", or a <nav> labelled as pagination.

What Google says

• Google's pagination guide: "Google no longer uses these tags, although these links may still be used by other search engines."
• What Google asks for instead is plain links: "include links from each page to the following page using <a href> tags", and consider linking every page back to the first one.
• The same guide: "Don't use the first page of a paginated sequence as the canonical page. Instead, give each page its own canonical URL."

So the tags are harmless and may help other search engines, but they don't replace crawlable links.

What to do on a paginated series

1. Give each page a unique address, such as /blog?page=2 or /blog/page/2.
2. Link the pages to each other with normal links ("Next", "Previous", page numbers).
3. Make each page's canonical point to itself (check 68).
4. Optionally, add rel="next" and rel="prev" for other search engines:

<link rel="prev" href="https://example.com/blog?page=1">
<link rel="next" href="https://example.com/blog?page=3">

On your platform

• WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: archive and collection pages are paginated by the platform. Check page 2 of your blog or a large collection in view-source to see what it outputs.
• Next.js: render the next and previous links as real <a> elements, not buttons that load more with JavaScript only.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search (updated 10 December 2025), checked 3 October 2026.