Should one use rel-pagination for large HTML Sitemaps?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Should one use rel-pagination for large HTML Sitemaps?
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  Federico Sasso: Interesting, but... should one even use large HTML sitemaps?
  And if so, bother to index them? To me they would flatten any attempt to properly silo (hey, I learnt a new word!) a large web site.
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Imagine a news website with tons of topics you want to surface quickly, a large HTML sitemap would help with that.
  
  For silo-ing, you can always created categorized HTML sitemaps and then have multiple paginated HTML (silo'd) sitemaps.
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Also, whoever said I would bother to index it?
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  Federico Sasso: I assumed you would since you mentioned rel-pagination. Any other agent to consume it?
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: You can always paginate + noindex (the subsequent pages). Other agents can be humans of course.
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  Federico Sasso: > Other agents can be humans of course.
  LOL I meant the rel-pagination, not the HTML sitemap :)
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Heh, not sure what you mean then with other agents?
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  Federico Sasso: I mean: if it's not for search bots, what is rel-pagination for? Is there any other program using it?
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: I don't think there would be... possible that it allows for other people to scrape it I guess?
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  Federico Sasso: I'm missing something may be...
  
  > You can always paginate + noindex (the subsequent pages)
  What would you exactly noindex and what would you index?
  
  P.S.: terribly sorry to steer a little OT :(
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: noindex the subsequent paginated pages (page=2 to n) except for the top-level one.
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  Federico Sasso: > except for the top-level one.
  Gotcha! Here's the bit I was missing. I was assuming the first page was meant to be same level, not top-level.
  Thank you
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Sure thing
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:07:04 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/should_one_use_relpagination_for_large_html_sitemaps +Micah Fisher-Kirshner
  
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