Google not indexing multi-page posts properly
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Does anyone know how to make WordPress properly apply the <link rel=”prev”> and <link rel=”next”> tags to posts that have been split into multiple pages using <!–nextpage–>? Right now they erroneously link to the previous and next posts, when they should link to the previous and next pages of the current post.
The problem I’m having is that Google refuses to index any page of my posts beyond the first page. This is a serious problem for my blog because my posts average about 5000 words and most of the content that makes the posts unique is in the following pages.
What would you recommend? Getting rid of the pagination or maybe a fix is in the works for the WordPress.com platform?
Thank you for your help!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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@Rob:
There aren’t really any plans to add this kind of support at the moment. In any case, can I ask why you’re interested in this capability?
I’d imagine your readers will want to start with the first page, which is correctly displayed in search results. Adding additional pages for the same post, in search results, would probably confuse folks.
Perhaps you can send me a link, or image, to where some element “erroneously link[s] to the previous and next posts”?
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Ok, my article “The Privacy Equation” at:
is a 6 page post. The first page leads into it, obviously, but the meat of the material (the mathematical derivations and their justifications) don’t begin until page 2:
The bulk of the post is therefore on pages 2-5. Page 1 is basically the intro, and page 6 is the conclusion.
Google does not realize pages 2-6 are related to the first page of the post, and the whole article does not get indexed properly. In other words, I can’t search for any phrase appearing in pages 2-6. I suspect this is because of how of the way that WordPress generates the <link rel=””> tags,
As an example, go to the source of page 3:
This is the next and prev relationships that appear in the <head> right now:
<link rel='prev' title='The Future of Education' href='http://talkaboutthefuture.org/2015/08/29/the-future-of-education/' /> <link rel='next' title='Hundreds of Automatic License Plate Readers Found Wide Open by the EFF' href='http://talkaboutthefuture.org/2015/10/28/hundreds-of-automatic-license-plate-readers-found-wide-open-by-the-eff/' />You see how they point to the next and previous posts? This is how they should appear, in order to tell Google that “Page 3” is part of paginated content:
<link rel='prev' title='The Privacy Equation | Talk about the Future | Page 2' href='http://talkaboutthefuture.org/2015/10/25/the-privacy-equation/2/'/> <link rel='next' title='The Privacy Equation | Talk about the Future | Page 4' href='http://talkaboutthefuture.org/2015/10/25/the-privacy-equation/4/'/>This is according to Google’s search engine documentation:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en&ref_topic=4617741
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As a follow up, page 1’s previous relationship can still point to the previous post, and page 6’s next relationship can still point to the following post.
All other relationships (page 1’s next, page 6’s previous and pages 2-5s next and previous) should only point to other pages in the same post.
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The Google documentation you linked contains suggestions. You can see that they explicitly say that such tags are not necessary:
Paginated content is very common, and Google does a good job returning the most relevant results to users, regardless of whether content is divided into multiple pages.
We elect to use those tags, in this case, for describing the chronological relationship between the posts on your site. This is a valid alternative way of using those tags.
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Ok, so this is the part of the conversation where you tell the paying customer he’s wrong, but don’t address his actual problem.
Google is clearly *not* indexing my multi-page posts properly. You can quickly verify this by using the google site: operator, or doing a quoted search for any phrase that appears on page 2 or higher in any post.
I offered a possible explanation as to why, and asked for suggestions to make them index properly. Since WordPress believes that the relationship between the pages of a post is not important enough to explicitly define, what else can be done?
Right now I feel the only solution is to condense my posts back to a single page and hand-code the navigation.
When are we going to get a Table of Contents plug-in? That would solve the problem I’m having completely.
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I don’t think you’re wrong, but Google makes it clear that the tags can be used in multiple ways. Google treats them as suggestive, not as directives, and moreover they suggest they’ll parse paginated posts in any case.
We happen to use the tags to indicate the relation between chronological posts, and this is entirely appropriate according to the (fairly informal) specifications as well.
I also noticed that Google isn’t indexing content on your subsequent pages in a paginated post. I agree that’s a problem, but there’s nothing we’re doing to block Google from indexing that content. It appears to be a problem on their end.
If you want such content to be indexed, you can try contacting Google to surface this apparent bug, or condense your paginated posts into unpaginated posts as you suggest.
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You could also try using a “More” tag:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/more-tag/view-all/I suspect this will skirt the Google bug, but also give you the ability to present your posts in an abridged format on archive and home pages, so that readers aren’t seeing very large blocks of text, which can impede navigation.
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As a test, I collapsed a seven page post into one big page and resubmitted it for indexing by Google. Within 24 hours the entire post was searchable.
Let this serve as a warning to anybody else: don’t use pagination on WordPress if you want your entire post to be indexed by Google.
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