Has Rel Next Link records whether RankGear finds a link element in the rendered page body whose rel value is exactly next — the classic marker for the next item in a paginated or ordered sequence. It returns 1 when such a link is present and 0 when it is not; read it as an observation about your markup, not a lever to pull, because search engines may not treat rel-next as an indexing directive.
| Factor ID | RG-LNK-002 |
|---|---|
| Family | Links on the page |
| Measurement | Boolean presence (0 / 1) |
| Measured zone | Link tags in the rendered page body |
What it measures
This factor indicates whether RankGear finds a body link element whose rel value is exactly next. That value has traditionally been used to identify the next resource in a sequence — for example, the following page in a paginated article or product listing.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear parses link elements from the rendered body and compares each element’s complete rel value case-insensitively against next. An exact match returns 1; anything else returns 0. Anchor (a) tags and head-only rel declarations do not satisfy this implementation — only a link element found in the body counts.
What RankGear looks for
<link rel="next" href="/articles/page/3/">| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | A link element in the body carries a rel value equal to exactly next. |
| 0 | No such element was found. Anchor tags, head-only rel="next" declarations, and multi-token values such as rel="next prefetch" do not count. |
How to optimize it
Use sequential relationship markup only when it accurately represents a paginated or ordered series and the consuming system actually supports it. Keep clear, crawlable navigation and descriptive page-to-page links in place regardless of this tag. Treat this factor as an observation of what your markup contains rather than a target to chase — do not add or relocate rel-next markup solely to move the score.
Important considerations
- Search engines may not use rel-next as an indexing directive, so a value of 1 does not imply a ranking benefit.
- The body-only measurement can miss the conventional head placement of rel-next, returning 0 even when the markup exists in the document head.
- Multi-token rel values (for example
rel="next prefetch") are not equal to the exact expected value and return 0. - Do not relocate correct markup merely to influence this score.
- This is a correlational signal: it describes what a page contains within a measured result set and acts as a prioritization signal, not a cause of ranking.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.