Google: Safer To Use Absolute URLs With Canonical Tags

Oct 25, 2018 - 7:32 am 1 by

Absolut

Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that when it comes to implementing canonical tags on your site, it is recommended to use absolute URLs instead of relative URLs. He said this will help ensure Google has interpreted them correctly.

This isn't really new news, we covered a similar topic back in 2013 when Allan Scott of Google posted on the Google blog that absolute URLs are the way to go.

In general, using either is fine with Google but sometimes going with absolute URLs can be better for Google. It depends. Absolute URLs can be a nightmare to maintain with some CMS platforms.

Here is John's tweet:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 6, 2026

Jan 6, 2026 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Hiring AI Answers & Search Quality Software Engineer

Jan 6, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Added LLMs.txt To It's Web Sites For Other Reasons Than Discovery

Jan 6, 2026 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Microsoft Bing Tests New Home Page Design Promoting Copilot

Jan 6, 2026 - 7:31 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Practice Problems Structured Data Help Documentation Removed

Jan 6, 2026 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

Google Ads To Allow Ads For Prediction Markets

Jan 6, 2026 - 7:11 am
 
Previous Story: Google: We Fixed Over 50 Bugs In Search Console Over Past Month