Has Rel Prev Link reports whether the page’s rendered body contains a link element whose rel value is exactly prev. It returns a simple yes/no (1 or 0) — it confirms only that the markup is present, not that the previous-page URL is correct or that any search engine acts on it.
| Factor ID | RG-LNK-004 |
|---|---|
| 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 recognizes a body link element whose rel value is exactly prev. It is the pagination-sequence signal that points at the previous resource in an ordered set. The check is binary: the element is either detected in the rendered body or it is not.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear parses link tags from the rendered body and performs a case-insensitive exact comparison of the rel value against prev. It does not inspect anchor relationships, head declarations, link destinations, or whether the sequence is ordered correctly — a match on the exact rel string is all that sets this factor to 1.
What RankGear looks for
<link rel="prev" href="https://example.com/articles/page-2">| Value | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | A body link element with rel equal to prev was detected (any letter case). |
| 0 | No such element was found in the rendered body — including when the tag sits only in the document head. |
How to optimize it
Use previous-resource metadata only for a genuine ordered sequence, and only where it benefits the clients that support it. More important than the markup itself: give readers visible, crawlable navigation that lets them move backward and forward through paginated content. Because this factor reads the body, a rel="prev" declaration placed in the head — the conventional location — will register as 0 here; treat that as an observation about where the tag lives, not a defect to force-fix by moving valid markup.
Important considerations
- Conventional head placement can score 0, because this factor reads the rendered body rather than the document head.
- Search engines may ignore the
prevrelationship for indexing, so presence is not a ranking lever. - Presence confirms the tag exists; it does not verify that the referenced previous-page URL is correct.
- Do not add pagination markup to pages that are not part of an ordered sequence.
- This is a correlation-based observation within a measured result set, not a cause of ranking — a 1 here does not make a page rank, and a 0 does not prevent it.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.