Google indexed excessive empty pages due to a script error

[elearner]

I need help from WebmasterWorld Experts on following issues:

Problem 1 - I found an error in pagination script of my website and due to that Google has indexed 1000s of empty pages

Shall I simply fix this issue? what shall I do with empty pages?

Problem 2 - I have noticed that many big names have lost PR of their pagination including mine, like:

A. myweb.com/products.htm (PR 4)
B. myweb.com/products/1.htm (PR 0)
C. myweb.com/products/2.htm (PR 0)

Does it mean Google is not giving value to sub-pages, what do you say if I make page A as canonical? In this case all values will be goes to page A.

[deadsea]

Has Google actually indexed those pages, or just crawled them? I mean, can you search for phrases in Google and see those blank pages in the SERPs? I would be very surprised if you can. My guess is that Google has just crawled the pages but not indexed them.

In that case, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Googlebot will probably come back to visit them from time to time, but probably ignores them. It would be best to 301 redirect them to something else appropriate.

As far as pagination, I would get rid of it. Canonical every page to page 1 works fine. I'll bet your users don't use the pagination any more than Google does. Its probably best to get rid of it entirely and redirect all subsequent pages back to page 1. Here is some recent discussion about it: [webmasterworld.com...]

[deadsea]

I hadn't read to the end of the discussion in that other thread about pagination until now. Some folks there are claiming that Google has stated that rel canonical is NOT appropriate for pagination.

[elearner]

Thanks deadsea for your valuable feedback.

You are right, Google has not indexed those pages, they have just crawled.

There is another issue, we just have improved our query to increase the relevancy & quality of content in our landing pages which decreased the pages of every products but in this case plenty of indexed pages that has content earlier are now appearing empty.

I am going to 301 redirect all those empty pages to page 1 of that particular product, is that ok?

[deadsea]

I am going to 301 redirect all those empty pages to page 1 of that particular product, is that ok?

Yes