How can I stop pagination URLs from getting indexed?

Question

I want to prevent pagination URLs from being crawled or indexed anywhere.

When I check site:example.com, the search results looks like this.

I have not listed this type of URLs in sitemap.xml

How do I stop this from happening?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '19 at 14:01

You should firstly decide, what to do at first: prevent indexing, or prevent crawling? Both at the same time isn't possible.

Lets assume, your pagination is already indexed. Than you should firstly de-index it, and then prevent crawling. Do it on the following way:

1.1. If you can, add to each paginated page the meta tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex".

1.2. Otherwise add to your htaccess (in case of Apache 2.2) or server configuration file (in case on Nginx) a rule like:

SetEnvIf Request_URI "/page/.*" NOINDEXFOLLOW
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, follow" env=REDIRECT_NOINDEXFOLLOW

1.3. For Apache 2.4 use

<If "%{REQUEST_URI} =~ m#/page/.*#">
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, follow"
</If>

1.4. Note, if use Wordpress, set this rule on the beginning of htaccess file.

1.5. Create an additional sitemap with paginated page and submit it to GSC - on this way Google understands faster, what to do.

1.6. Than monitor SERP. After you realize, paginated pages aren't no longer in SERP, than:

1 Answers1