Dynamic canonical link elements?

[Andiamo]

I recently started working with a client who has a website that's built on angular js. I noticed that their canonical link elements are interestingly structured. Instead of the actual URL, the canonical specifies the following:

href="{{pageHost}}{{storymeta.og_url}}"

Has anyone else encountered this sort of dynamic canonical link element before?

[goodroi]

I haven't seen this specific one before.

Pardon me as I climb up on my soapbox ... In general the more complicated and fancy you get, the worse the results will end up. Keep it as simple as possible whenever you can. Don't take any unnecessary risks of using complicated solutions that Googlebot might not properly understand.

Even when Google says they can handle it or develops the technology themselves, don't complicate things if you can avoid it. Google is a big company with many different teams and these teams often don't talk with each other. Too many times one Google team has encouraged an idea that had horrible consequences with SEO. Just look at https - Google is encouraging it but many of their systems weren't ready to handle the https migration.

When in doubt - KEEP IT SUPER SIMPLE