previous

This link relation is defined in IETF RFC-5005.

Some of the ATOM collections returned by the web service (for example, search results and change log resources) may be paged - divided into a series of linked feed resources. A previous link points to the previous page (the previous feed resource in the series).

The following example shows a change log resource containing a link of this type:

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
...
  <link rel="self" 
        href="http://host-ip-address/webservice/escenic/changelog/publication/12/before/9425007?count=10"/>
  <link rel="previous" 
        href="http://host-ip-address/webservice/escenic/changelog/publication/12/after/9425006?count=10"/>
  <link rel="next" 
        href="http://host-ip-address/webservice/escenic/changelog/publication/12/before/9424970?count=10"/>
...
</feed>

Note that many Atom feeds are ordered by date, with the newest entry first. This means that the previous page of a change log will contain links to newer resources, not older ones.