Robert_Charlton - 8:22 pm on Jan 21, 2013 (gmt 0)

Google actually suggests three options for pagination... one of which is rel="next" and rel="prev". See some further discussion in this thread....

Changing count of posts per page on forum & its effect on rankings
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4535210.htm [webmasterworld.com]

In the thread I link to an excellent Google support page describing all three options, and also link to the video....

Pagination - Google Support
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 [support.google.com]

Which option you use, IMO, depends on the situation and how you implement it. There's a View All option, eg, where all paginated pages are regarded by Google as one. View All is probably the best option for paginated forum threads, eg, where, as I note in the thread, "the unpredictable shape of forum discussions" makes this a wise choice.

For product pages, if you prioritize the order of products (most important products first), then rel="next" and rel="prev" appears to be the best approach. As Google describes on the support page...

My emphasis added at the end...

Use rel="next" and rel="prev" links to indicate the relationship between component URLs. This markup provides a strong hint to Google that you would like us to treat these pages as a logical sequence, thus consolidating their linking properties and usually sending searchers to the first page.

And if you either do nothing or do something wrong, Google says...

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.

And later...

...if an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation is missing... we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.