I don't think this is a bug. After all, why waste resources indexing pages 2 .... n when nobody even goes there? If something accrues signals outside of Google

I don't think this is a bug. After all, why waste resources indexing pages 2 .... n when nobody even goes there? If something accrues signals outside of Google naturally, then I am sure it will get indexed. On this note, I don't want to be another 'SEO is Dead' person, because it is never dead, it just changes, but I do suspect over the longer term, links will become less relevant and Google will take a more human-curated approach to ranking selection using LLMs.