Canonical URL Is Relative

What This Means

The canonical link's href attribute is a relative URL (e.g., /page/ or ../page/) rather than an absolute URL (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/page/). Relative canonical URLs require the browser or parser to resolve them against the document's base URL.

Why It Matters for SEO

While browsers reliably resolve relative URLs using the document's base URL, search engine canonical processing is less consistently defined. Relative canonicals may be resolved differently by different search engines, or may not be resolved as expected if the page has a <base> element that overrides the default base URL.

The safest and most authoritative practice is to always use absolute URLs in canonical tags — this removes any ambiguity about which URL is being declared as canonical.

What the Platform Checks

The platform checks each canonical href for an absolute URL scheme (https:// or http://). Fires when the href is a relative URL.

How to Fix It

Update the canonical href to an absolute URL:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com/this-page/">

In CMS templates, ensure the canonical URL variable outputs the full absolute URL. Most SEO plugins do this correctly — if using a custom template, explicitly construct the full URL including protocol and domain.