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Relative canonical address

canonicals.canonical_relative
Priority
Medium
Severity
Warning

What we look for

The canonical tag (the line naming a page's preferred address) on these pages gives a relative address, such as /page, instead of a full one that starts with https:// and the domain.

Why it matters

Search engines fill in the missing part from the address they fetched, so a copy of the page on a test domain or an http:// address points them at that copy instead of your live page.

How to fix

Write each canonical tag as a full address, starting with https:// and your domain, in the page template or SEO plugin.

Where you’ll see it

The id is stable, and every surface uses it, so it’s the thing to search for or hand to an agent.

Terminal
When it is one of the five findings under Fix first, raptor crawl prints the id under it.
Check: canonicals.canonical_relative
crawl.json and the CSV
The crawl JSON names the finding by this id, and so do the CSV and raptor_query.
"check_id": "canonicals.canonical_relative"
The HTML report
This link opens the finding in the report, and each finding shows its id.
crawl.html#finding=canonicals.canonical_relative
MCP
raptor_findings with this check_id returns the finding in full, with a fix brief ready to paste into a task. If it didn’t fire, it says why.
raptor_findings {
  "job_id": "...",
  "check_id": "canonicals.canonical_relative"
}