Sometimes the pagination is optional to allow the client to only get as many results as they can handle. But far more often, the pagination is forced - get 100

Sometimes the pagination is optional to allow the client to only get as many results as they can handle. But far more often, the pagination is forced - get 100 results, hit this link for the next 100 - in order to limit the load on the server. Most trivial scenario, client runs a search that's too generic, you don't want to waste server resources actually preparing 999999 results.