Dividing a collection across multiple pages, such as product categories or article archives.
Pagination divides a collection into separate pages, such as the first, second and third portions of a product category. It is a way of organizing access to a larger set, not a separate description of each item. A visitor should be able to understand where they are in the collection and reach items beyond the opening screen.
For search discovery, later portions need accessible URLs and crawlable links. Google does not generally interact with a page as a person would by clicking a load-more button. A visually smooth interface therefore needs an underlying access strategy that does not leave the rest of the collection available only after an interaction.
Different portions of a paginated collection ordinarily contain different items. They are not automatically duplicates of page one. Google recommends a unique URL and its own canonical for each page in the sequence, rather than pointing every page’s canonical at the start. Filtering or sorting can introduce separate URL-management decisions, which should not be confused with ordinary pagination.
Takeaway: Make the whole collection reachable, not just the first set of cards. Check the underlying links and URLs as well as the visible next-page control.
Example
A wholesale supplier shows twenty products at a time. A customer opening the third category page directly can see that page’s products and move to adjacent pages. The supplier also tests the actual product links there, rather than validating only the first twenty items after a redesign.
What to check
Open a later page in a fresh tab and inspect its content, response and canonical. Test an out-of-range page as well. If infinite scrolling is used visually, ask how equivalent paginated URLs and links support discovery without requiring scrolling actions.
For more detail, see Google pagination guidance.