The answer seems like a plain-as-day yes, but I'd rather have a more certain idea.
Should an out-of-range pagination query, e.g. 11 of 10, produce a 404?
I'm working on a React.js application where we have managed to delay an isomorphic re-work of the stack, for the time being. A Rails backend delivers the application, and the React.js front-end makes front-end calls to a Search API for paginated results.
What this currently means is that no matter what ?page=
equals, the response code will be 200, even if the search query (which includes the page param) has no results. The backend, at this time, has no idea what the query results are.
Common sense SEO wisdom says this is bad, because technically infinite URLs will then 200 with identical page content.
With that said, hoping to totally rule out the possibility that in this particular pagination scenario, the situation isn't so egregious.