Canonical URLs and screen scraping

[friendlymachine]

So a little question here. I was looking into a module to help implement canonical URLs on a certain CMS and I came a cross a snarky comment about relative vs. absolute URLs being used. This person was insistent that relative URLs are fine and absolute URLs are only for people who don't know what they are doing.

My question is, if using relative URLs, doesn't it make it easier to have your content scraped? After all, if you do get your content scraped at least it would point back to your site if using absolute URLs, right? Am I missing something or is my thinking OK on this?

Any feedback is much appreciated!

[RobertFisher]

John

You can use either and the web is full of those who go back and forth on this issue. My guess is that any really good scraper software can likely deal with absolute urls today. The advantage that we like with relative is all about page load speed - the file size is smaller with relative urls.

So, you will get arguments both ways. If scraping is a huge issue for you, maybe you go with absolute. We know people will scrape content and we continue with relative for the above reason and because it is easier to make certain changes/linking/redirects within a CMS.

Oh as to people who use absolutes not knowing what they are doing....that is bunk. They have other priorities, maybe.

[AlanMosley]

People don’t abuse people when you have facts on their side, reminds me of "you don’t believe in global warming, because your un-educated" argument.
I have seen just in the last few weeks where using absolute url has got me a link. I wrote a youmoz article with a link to my website, it has been copied and has the link in it. Of cause being on SEOMoz, I have to use a absolute url back to myself
I don’t usually use absolute links on my own site, I think search engines almost always know who copied who.
I agree with rob, but I will add, a good screen scraper will remove a canonical tag, but removing absolute links is not so easy, as you then have broken links, also I believe if you have image in the article linking back to you, search engines will know who the real owner is, same with css, js and a number of other refs. Screen scrapers rarely get credit for these reasons as well as the fact that if your site has a lot of duplicate, then it is obvious that you are the one coping It’s either the one site is copied from many locations or many locations have copied from the one site.

[friendlymachine]

Thanks, Robert. Your rational for using relative links make sense. I appreciate you helping me sort through the noise on this issue.

John

[friendlymachine]

Thanks for your reply, Alan. I also considered a screen scraper removing the canonical tag, but to me screen scraping seemed lazy in the first place and so maybe they wouldn't bother in most cases. I guess that a best practice with canonicals is really situation dependent.