Google not indexing pages due to "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" issue

[jperezr21]

Link to the code that reproduces this issue

https://github.com/jperezr21/static-and-dynamic-metadata

To Reproduce

1. Create dynamic path with async generateMetadata that sets alternates.canonical to the path without any query params (let's say /[storeHandle]/[productSlug]).
2. Have a selectable property that's reflected in the URL query params (eg: ?variant=[variantName])
3. Have other pages link to the page with the query params (eg: link to specific product variants).
4. Google will say there's no user-selected canonical for these pages even though it is (the problem is that the canonical tag is being streamed and it's not present in the initial HTML).

Current vs. Expected behavior

• Current: Google is not detecting user-selected canonical for streamed pages
• Expected: Have the ability for defining both static and dynamic metadata. I want to have the canonical as static, but the rest (product title, description, images, etc) dynamic. This isn't supported at the moment (from the docs):

You cannot export both the metadata object and generateMetadata function from the same route segment.

Provide environment information

Operating System:
  Platform: darwin
  Arch: arm64
  Version: Darwin Kernel Version 24.5.0: Tue Apr 22 19:54:29 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T6030
  Available memory (MB): 18432
  Available CPU cores: 11
Binaries:
  Node: 22.13.1
  npm: 11.1.0
  Yarn: N/A
  pnpm: 10.12.1
Relevant Packages:
  next: 15.3.4 // Latest available version is detected (15.3.4).
  eslint-config-next: N/A
  react: 19.1.0
  react-dom: 19.1.0
  typescript: N/A
Next.js Config:
  output: N/A

Which area(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Metadata

Which stage(s) are affected? (Select all that apply)

Vercel (Deployed)

Additional context

No response

_NEXT-4690

[icyJoseph]

Hi,

While the team answers back, is it possible for you to try with a plain tag? https://react.dev/reference/react-dom/components/link#linking-to-related-resources

[jperezr21]

@icyJoseph tried that. It broke scroll to top when navigating on client 😕

[jperezr21]

Related: #79313

[l-you]

@jperezr21 I worked around it with htmlLimitedBots: /.*/, property in next.config.mjs.

[l-you]

Hope more people will upvote this issue that time.

[jperezr21]

@l-you not sure how htmlLimitedBots works internally, but your approach might be disabling streaming of head tags for all user agents, making the site slower for real users.

I took the regex from https://github.com/vercel/next.js/blob/canary/packages/next/src/shared/lib/router/utils/html-bots.ts and added Google-InspectionTool|Googlebot:

  htmlLimitedBots:
    /Google-InspectionTool|Googlebot|Mediapartners-Google|Chrome-Lighthouse|Slurp|DuckDuckBot|baiduspider|yandex|sogou|bitlybot|tumblr|vkShare|quora link preview|redditbot|ia_archiver|Bingbot|BingPreview|applebot|facebookexternalhit|facebookcatalog|Twitterbot|LinkedInBot|Slackbot|Discordbot|WhatsApp|SkypeUriPreview|Yeti/i,

[shriekdj]

@jperezr21 canonical is needed to be prefixed with domain. add metadaBase with your domain name to auto prefix the domain name prefixing

[anubus298]

@jperezr21 canonical is needed to be prefixed with domain. add metadaBase with your domain name to auto prefix the domain name prefixing

can you clarify please more ?

[shriekdj]

@jperezr21 canonical is needed to be prefixed with domain. add metadaBase with your domain name to auto prefix the domain name prefixing

can you clarify please more ?

@anubus298 for canonical full url is needed like https://yourdomain.com/your_url not just this /your_url but nextjs provides an key in metaData object named metadataBase which is prefixed url which automatically adds https://yourdomain.com at start even if we provided /your_url to canonical

[shriekdj]

it is mostly added in layout.ts only once and all the after domain automatically adds prefix in the domain

[benkingcode]

I can't believe how much they have overengineered and overcomplicated this. And even still, Googlebot is not in the default list, and it doesn't work! I have noindex listed on pages that Googlebot isn't even picking up because of this streaming metadata crap.

[shriekdj]

I can't believe how much they have overengineered and overcomplicated this. And even still, Googlebot is not in the default list, and it doesn't work! I have noindex listed on pages that Googlebot isn't even picking up because of this streaming metadata crap.

yeah, i also think the same thing. they have too much over engineered everything which is headache now.