Is the full URL necessary for successful Canonical Links?

[rmkjersey]

Hi, my first question and hopefully an easy enough one to answer.

Currently in the head element of our pages we have canonical references such as:

(Yes, untidy URL...we are working on it!)

I am just trying to find out whether this snippet of the full URL is adequete for canonicalization or if the full domain is needed aswell.

My reason for asking is that the SEOmoz On-Page Optimization grading tool is 'failing' all our pages on the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value.

I have been unable to find a definitive answer on this, although admittedly most examples do use the full URL. (I am not the site developer so cannot simply change this myself, but rather have to advise him in a weekly meeting).

So in short, presumably using the full URL is best practise, but is it essential to its effectiveness when being read by the search engines? Or could there be another reason why the "Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical" value is not being green ticked?

Thank you very much, I appreciate any advice you can give.

[rmkjersey]

Thanks I will get the full URLs implemented to avoid any future confusions.

I can't give an exact size of the site but I know it is much larger than it should be. It seems as though our CMS has been unnecessarily producing new URLs for the same pages over and over which we are aiming to fix very soon.

[rmkjersey]

Thank you for your fast responses!

Sorry Damien, I am at odds as to how I missed this bit of information!

In light of this, do you have any clues as to why SEOmoz on page diagnostics does not like our canonical references?

[rmkjersey]

Thank you for your fast responses!

Sorry Damien, I am at odds as to how I missed this bit of information!

In light of this, do you have any clues as to why SEOmoz on page diagnostics does not like our canonical references?

[MaryAnneG]

Interesting that Google mentions absolute and relative urls, but  they don't specifically address root relative  urls (what this is, since it begins with the "/") or show it in their examples.

[StalkerB]

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

Part of relevance -

Can the link be relative or absolute?

The rel="canonical" attribute can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.

[krissy-cca]

If you check half way down the page it answers exactly what you're after.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

In short, it's fine

DD

..if you can't be bothered finding it:

"Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as ?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL."