Google suggests webmasters, developers, and publisher continue to use rel=prev/next for other reasons outside of Google indexing purposes.
It was an oversight. “We apologize for any confusion. This was an oversight and something that we should have communicated proactively before taking down the documentation,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land on Friday. The company also said it will aim to do better at communicating these kinds of changes in the future.
“As our systems improve over time, there may be instances where specific types of markup is not as critical as it once was, and we’re committed to providing guidance when changes are made.”
Should you remove the markup? Probably not. Google has communicated this morning in a video hangout that while it may not use rel=next/prev for search, it can still be used by other search engines and by browsers, among other reasons. So while Google may not use it for search indexing, rel=prev/next can still be useful for users. Specifically some browsers might use those annotations for things like prefetching and accessibility purposes.
Bing partially supports rel=prev/next. Frédéric Dubut from Bing said yesterday that while Bing doesn’t use it to merge pages into a single set, they do use it for discoverability and understanding a site’s overall structure.
Frédéric Dubut@CoperniXWe’re using rel prev/next (like most markup) as hints for page discovery and site structure understanding. At this point we’re not merging pages together in the index based on these and we’re not using prev/next in the ranking model. https://twitter.com/searchmartin/status/1108797316088004608 …
searchmartin✔@searchmartin
@CoperniX Hey Frederic, are you guys still using rel prev and next? 😉 https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2012/04/13/implementing-markup-for-paginated-and-sequenced-content …
Google doesn’t use it at all. But just to be clear, Google is not using it at all.
Barry Schwartz✔@rustybrick
but you still use it for merging pages together in the same set?
John
✔@JohnMu
We don’t use link-rel-next/prev at all.
But that doesn’t mean you should make single gigantic pages when it isn’t the best solution for your users, Google said:
Google Webmasters✔@googlewmc
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 pic.twitter.com/hCODPoKgKp