Google has finally informed the search community that the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags have not been used for years.
Earlier today, John Mueller from Google shared this update on Twitter:
"We noticed that we weren’t using rel-next/prev in indexing for a number of years now, so we thought we might as well remove the docs :)."
Shortly thereafter, the Google Webmasters account issued an official statement:
"Spring cleaning! As we evaluated our indexing signals, we decided to retire rel=prev/next. Studies show that users love single-page content, aim for that when possible, but multi-part is also fine for Google Search. Know and do what’s best for your users! #springiscoming"
For a long time, Google had advised using rel=prev/next markup when publishing a paginated series of web pages. This markup informed Google that the individual pages were part of the same series and indicated the order of pages within that series. However, Google no longer supports this markup.
John Mueller also confirmed that "We don’t use link-rel-next/prev at all."
For years, apparently, Google has not utilized signals from rel=prev/next when indexing content in search results. Instead, Google has been indexing content as discovered by its crawlers. According to Mueller, web pages in a series are indexed like any single-page content.
“For the most part, we just index the pages as we find them, so as we’ve recommended for a long time, it’s good to make sure that all pages can stand on their own.”
It seems publishers have been adept at communicating the necessary signals to Google without relying on rel=prev/next.
"Since it hasn’t been used for a while, it seems like most sites are doing pagination in reasonable ways that work regardless of these links. People make good sites, for a large part :)."
Publishers have alternative means to send signals to Google, such as linking to other pages of a series within the body content. It’s important to consider how to communicate to a searcher that the page they’ve accessed is part 3 of 5 in a series. When pagination is clear to a reader, it should be clear to Google too.
Another suggested option is creating more single-page content, as Google notes that users tend to prefer it, though multi-page content remains acceptable for search purposes.
