Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Topic · Crawling
Google's crawlers do not click buttons, so each page in a series needs its own URL and a normal <a href> link to the next. Google's pagination guide says later pages should not use page 1 as their canonical. On Day 2 Google said on stage that pointing paginated pages' canonical to page 1 can sometimes make sense, for example to make a category page more visible, but that it affects canonicalization and deduplication; this contradicts Day 1 and is not in Google's docs, and a 2013 Google post says the content of the later pages would then not be indexed at all. For infinite scroll, Google has said it renders with a very tall viewport that can miss content, and its lazy-loading guide asks for paginated loading with a unique URL per chunk. Moving to infinite scroll or a load-more button was called risky, depending on what you want to achieve, because Googlebot does not click buttons. In the Day 1 Q&A, captured by a second recording, Google answered a question about replacing thousands of paginated category pages with a JavaScript load-more button: without crawlable links to the further pages, Google will not see them at all.
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An audience member asked what happens to thousands of crawled and indexed paginated category and tag pages if they are replaced by a single page with a JavaScript load-more button, and whether the old pages should then redirect to the canonical first page.
From the audienceIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
If paginated pages are replaced by a load-more button or infinite scroll without crawlable links to them, Google will not see the further pages at all.
“Googlebot is not running around clicking on buttons”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-07
A Google panelist called pagination one of the trickiest things in web development and said switching to infinite scroll or a load-more button is risky, depending on what you want to achieve, because Googlebot does not click buttons.
“the infinite scrolling or load more thing is kind of dangerous, depending on what you want to achieve”
Wording checked against the slide or recording
Speaker not identifiedIn Day 1, 16:35 · Q&AEvidence notes, transcript
Used byrequirements DEV-URL-06, DEV-URL-07
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 1 · session not recorded
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-06
Google's speaker said that pointing rel=canonical from the pages of a paginated set to the first page can sometimes make sense depending on the goal, for example to make a category page more visible, but that it affects canonicalization and deduplication.
Speaker John MuellerIn Day 2, 11:55 · Handling web duplicationEvidence transcript
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-06
In Google's March 2023 SEO office hours, John Mueller said Google handles infinite scroll with viewport expansion, rendering a page like a very long phone, which is not very efficient and can miss content, so pagination links are strongly recommended.
“this is done through a technique called "viewport expansion", where we render a page like a very long phone.”
Publisher Google Search Central (SEO office hours transcript, March 2023)Annotates Day 2, 10:40 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScript
Google's 2013 post on rel=canonical mistakes says pointing rel=canonical from page 2 or later of a paginated series to page 1 is incorrect because the pages are not duplicates, and that it would result in the content on later pages not being indexed at all.
Publisher Search Central blog (8 April 2013)Annotates Day 2, 11:55 · Handling web duplication
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-06
Google's pagination guide says the pages of a paginated sequence may share the same title and description, and suggests linking every page of the sequence back to the first page.
Publisher Google Search CentralAnnotates Day 2, 11:55 · Handling web duplication
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-06
Audit tabs, accordions and 'load more' lists for content fetched on click or scroll: put tab content in the initial DOM and hide it with CSS, trigger lazy loading with an Intersection Observer, and give long lists paginated URLs linked with <a href>.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 10:40 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScript
Google's pagination guide still says not to use page 1 as the canonical of a paginated series, so keep self-referencing canonicals on paginated pages unless you deliberately want later pages folded into page 1 and the items they list are linked from elsewhere.
Author Ibrahim AnjroAnnotates Day 2, 11:55 · Handling web duplication
Used byrequirement DEV-URL-06
Google's speaker said that pointing rel=canonical from the pages of a paginated set to the first page can sometimes make sense depending on the goal, for example to make a category page more visible, but that it affects canonicalization and deduplication.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Google follows links in <a href> elements; a link that only runs an onclick handler, or a hash pseudo-link such as href=#/products, may be invisible to Google.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
A market or language selector built as a button works for users but leaves the whole cluster of alternate-language pages without crawlable links, so the cluster is orphaned for Google.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Content that loads only after a user action such as a click or a scroll is not in the DOM while Google renders the page, so Google cannot index it.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Lazy loading triggered by a scroll event listener, such as window.addEventListener('scroll', loadMoreProducts), never runs for Googlebot because Googlebot does not scroll.
Tab or accordion content fetched from an API only when a user clicks the tab, as in tab.onclick = () => fetch('/api/specs'), does not exist for Google until someone clicks.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Content that loads only when a user clicks an element is not supported in the way Google renders pages for indexing.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Google does not scroll a page when it renders it for indexing, so content that infinite scroll loads on scroll-depth triggers works for users but is never loaded for Google.
Google does not scroll a page when it renders it for indexing, so content that infinite scroll loads on scroll-depth triggers works for users but is never loaded for Google.
To make infinite scroll indexable, Google's lazy-loading guide says to support paginated loading: give each chunk its own persistent, unique URL, link sequentially to those URLs, and update the displayed URL with the History API when a new chunk becomes the main visible element.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Google's 2013 post on rel=canonical mistakes says pointing rel=canonical from page 2 or later of a paginated series to page 1 is incorrect because the pages are not duplicates, and that it would result in the content on later pages not being indexed at all.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Google cannot extract a link from an a element that only has an onclick handler, because Googlebot does not click, so the JavaScript is never triggered.
Google's crawlers do not click buttons. Each page in a series needs its own URL and an <a href> link to the next page, should not use page 1 as its canonical, and rel=next and rel=prev are no longer used.
Give each page of a paginated series its own URL, its own canonical and an <a href> to the next page
Rests on 6 claims, 6 of them in this topic
Back infinite scroll and load-more buttons with paginated URLs
Rests on 6 claims, 2 of them in this topic