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Rule · Canonicalization

Canonical URLs are absolute

SEO-CANON-02C2 Recommended· w4

Class
C2 Recommended
Weight
4
Severity on fail
major
Applies to
Google

Test this rule on a live site with the canonical tag checker. Free, no account needed.

Scope and evidence

Evaluated on pages in P with a head canonical. The book marks this requirement DOCUMENTED RECOMMENDATION, SEARCH-ENGINE-SPECIFIC.

Fail conditions

Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.

  • relative

    The canonical on {url} is “{href}”, a relative reference. Google recommends absolute URLs in rel="canonical". (RFC 6596 allows relative references; Google's guidance is stricter.)

  • empty_href

    The canonical element on {url} has no URL.

The documented fix

Build canonical URLs from the configured base URL, never from the request's Host header.

Sources, quoted

These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.