Does rel canonical need to be absolute?

[Confetti_Wedding]

Hi guys and gals,

Our CMS has just been updated to its latest version which finally adds support for rel=canonical. HUZZAH!!! However, it doesn't add the absolute URL of the page. There is a base ref tag which looks like <base <="" span="">href="http://shop.confetti.co.uk/" />

On a page such as http://shop.confetti.co.uk/branch/wedding-favours the canonical tag looks like rel="canonical" href="/branch/wedding-favours" />

Does Google recognise this as a legitimate canonical tag? The SEOmoz On-Page Report Card doesn't recognise it as such.

Any help would be great,

Thanks in advance,

Brendan.

[Naghirniac]

Hi Brendan,

You are luck: there is no need to be absolute, you can use the relative link.

You can confirm this at: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Best regards,

Naghirniac

[Confetti_Wedding]

Thanks Naghirniac,

Since I posted this I've looked further in to the CMS update and found that each and every page on our site (around 8,000) has a relative canonical link on it which points to itself. They also cannot be edited thus making them completely useless! Gotta love these CMS developers! URRRGGGGHHHHH!!!

Thanks anyway,

Brendan.