Yoast SEO

Release date: December 13th, 2022

In Yoast SEO 19.12, we're introducing the inclusive language analysis previously only available in Yoast SEO Premium. This will help you get feedback on words that might exclude part of your audience and get inclusive alternatives. This is only available in English for now. Plus, it is opt-in. Try it! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.12 in our release post!

Enhancements

• NEW in Free: Adds the inclusive language analysis for English as a beta feature. Get suggestions on how to improve non-inclusive phrases, to make your content appeal to a larger audience.
• Improves the Integrations page to explain more clearly the different types of integrations.
• Adds integration cards for The Events Calendar, the Seriously Simple Podcasting and the WP Recipe Maker plugins.
• Adds a new Website name text field in the Site Representation step of the First-time configuration.
• Improves the subheading distribution assessment by adding highlighting and also targeting long content before the first subheading.
• Improves the First-time configuration styling.
• Improves the transition words assessment for Arabic by removing some transition words.
• Improves the Yoast admin bar menu with more functionality and better links.
• Removes a notification that prompts users to help with translating the plugin in the language of the site.

Bugfixes

• Fixes a bug that would affect users managing the cron jobs with a plugin on PHP 8.1 after they have performed a core upgrade.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when trying to create breadcrumbs from unindexable items.
• Fixes a bug where blocks with a NULL blockName would trigger deprecation errors with PHP 8.1 and cause performance issues. Props to @dustyf.
• Fixes a bug where breadcrumbs markup would not validate due to improper nesting and closing of span tags. Props to @michaelbourne.
• Fixes a bug where highlighting would not be removed from the text after the analysis is updated and the present highlighting has become irrelevant.
• Fixes a bug where the Baidu Webmaster Tools link would go to the wrong page. Props to @SavPhill.
• Fixes a bug where the content analysis would not load when editing web stories in the Web Stories plug-in.
• Fixes a bug where the highlighting functionality would not be working when highlighting content in lists items in the Block editor in WordPress 6.1.
• Fixes a bug where the <title> tag would potentially be missing when publishing a story with the Web Stories plugin. Props to @swissspidy.
• Improves line ending handling for robots.txt contents.

Other

• Introduces a notice on the WordPress dashboard and the Yoast SEO dashboard to let users know we are dropping support for PHP < 7.2 starting March 1st, 2023.
• Reduces noise from PHP 8.1 deprecations.
• Improves compatibility with PHP 8.2.
• Allows using the yoast_seo_development_mode to override the wp_get_environment_type() result to production.
• Deprecates the built-in integration with the The Events Calendar plugin, following the release of its version 6.0.4 which integrates with Yoast SEO.
• Disallows setting or unsetting any dynamic properties on Abstract_Main.
• Removes the note in the readability analysis results that tells users that the Flesch reading ease score has moved to the Insights section.
• Removes the Yoast i18n package.
• Resolves a typo in the feedback string for the phrase exotic in the inclusive language analysis.

Release date: November 29th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.11 is out now. We're optimizing the Yoast SEO plugin to use fewer resources. This helps make your site faster and more efficient. In this release, we're doing this by streamlining your database. Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.11 in our release post!

Enhancements

• Adds a WP-CLI command to clean up unused data from our custom database tables: wp yoast cleanup.
• Performs a cleanup of indexables when a public post type (or taxonomy) becomes non-public.
• Notifies users to run the SEO optimization when a non-public post type (or taxonomy) becomes public.

Bugfixes

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when the SEO optimization was run after a post type had been manually excluded via a filter.
• Fixes a bug where an entry would be added to our indexables table when saving, updating, or accessing a post (or term) for a non-public post type (or taxonomy).
• Fixes a bug where duplicate indexable records would be created for the same object.
• Fixes a bug where indexables for users would not get removed when a user did not have any publicly viewable posts anymore.
• Fixes a bug where indexables for users would not get removed when author archives were disabled.
• Fixes a bug where indexables would be created for users when author archives were disabled.
• Fixes a bug where indexables would be created for users who did not have any publicly viewable posts.

Other

• Introduces the wpseo_indexable_excluded_taxonomies filter, to allow manually excluding taxonomies from being indexed.

Release Date: November 8th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.10 is out today. This release mostly consists of bug fixes and enhancements. In addition, we're getting our WordPress plugins ready for the upcoming High Performance Order Storage feature in WooCommerce 7.1+. Update now! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.9 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves the call-to-action feedback string of the Flesch Reading Ease insight when the text is recognized as fairly difficult.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown in the classic editor in combination with certain plugins that misuse metabox hooks.
• Fixes a bug where users with site-wide basic access authentication would be prompted to insert their credentials when saving a post in Elementor if they didn't have the manage_options capability.
• Fixes a bug where Yoast SEO-related post meta data would not be saved if a user without the manage_options capability would save a post in Elementor.

Other:

• Deprecates the hooks used to add custom content to the Yoast SEO settings pages, in preparation for future releases. The following hooks have been deprecated: wpseo_tools_overview_list_items, wpseo_settings_tab_crawl_cleanup, wpseo_settings_tab_site_analysis, Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_author_archives_meta, Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_date_archives_meta, Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_post_types_beforearchive, Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_post_types_archive, Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_taxonomies_meta, wpseo_admin_other_section, wpseo_admin_opengraph_section, wpseo_admin_pinterest_section, wpseo_admin_twitter_section, wpseo_import_other_plugins.
• Ensures compatibility with the High Performance Order Storage feature in WooCommerce 7.1+.
• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 6.1.

Release Date: October 25th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.9 is out today. Yoast SEO already supports the Schema necessary for Google's Site Names update, but we've expanded support for it in this release. In addition, we give users more control over what names they can add, including an alternate title. Of course, there's a lot more, so check it out! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.9 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds input fields to overwrite the site name, as well as an extra input field for a (potentially shorter) alternate name. Google introduced new support for site names in Google Search. Yoast SEO already outputs this value correctly, using the WordPress site name. With these changes, we have increased the control site owners have over this value.
• Improves the Schema output for Organization by no longer putting out an empty array if no social profiles have been added for it.
• Adds immediate keyphrase tracking after connecting to Wincher.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when using the wpseo_breadcrumb_links filter in the wrong way on PHP 8.0+.
• Fixes a bug where social or canonical URLs containing @ would lead to encoding issues. Props to @stodorovic.
• Fixes a bug where the buttons in the FAQ and in the how-to block would be hardly visible when using a dark theme.
• Fixes a bug where the number of words would be counted incorrectly when using Cyrillic script. Props to kudinovfedor.
• Fixes a bug where the previously used keyphrase assessment would also appear under the readability analysis tab when the cornerstone content toggle would be switched on.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO optimization routine would give an error when an image file of an image linked in a post could not be retrieved.
• Fixes a bug where the wrong canonical URL would be set on attachment pages.

Other:

• Adds taxonomy information to breadcrumbs of type "term" to be able to filter them better with the wpseo_breadcrumb_links filter. Props to @svenvonarx.
• Adds a wpseo_primary_category_admin_pages filter to enable the use of the primary category in the post URL of additional admin pages besides the default ones. Props to @ssvet.
• Reinstates the wpseo_twitter_card_type filter that was wrongly deprecated in 19.8.

Release Date: October 11th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.8 is out now! In this release, weve mainly focused on enhancements, fixes, and other improvements. For instance, youll find improvements to our structured data implementation. Check it out! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.8 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Enhances the Schema breadcrumbs generation to make sure that empty list items are not included, preventing Schema validation errors.
• Adds a X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow header to all comment feeds to prevent them from being indexed, reducing duplicate content.
• Removes two notifications from the Yoast SEO dashboard: the one suggesting enabling auto-updates, and the one suggesting activating an add-on that is installed but currently inactive.
• Forces the twitter:card meta tag to the preferred summary_large_image value.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on WordPress.com using PHP 8.0 in relation with the Debug Bar.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when the php_uname() function is disabled by the web hosting provider and usage tracking is enabled.
• Fixes a bug where changes in the replacement variables (e.g. the value of the %%title%% replacement variable when the post title changes) would not be reflected in the Meta description length, the SEO title width, and the Keyphrase in SEO title assessments.
• Fixes a bug where passing __false to the wpseo_robots filter would result in a max-image-preview:large robots meta directive instead of the desired noindex, nofollow directive.
• Fixes a bug where robots meta tags would be unintentionally synchronized between pages in different languages when using multilingual plugins like WPML or Polylang.
• Fixes a bug where the query parameters from an image URL would be omitted in the sitemap.xml.
• Fixes a bug where the sidebar issue counter would show a wrong number of issues, on the first page load after an issue was resolved.
• Fixes a bug where Yoast SEO would conflict with Elementor, when Yoast Premium or Yoast News or Yoast Video is active, throwing console errors.

Other:

• Deprecates the wpseo_twitter_card_type filter.

Release Date: October 5th, 2022

Other:

• Removes the cURL minimal version check from the Site Health page, as it was causing issues.

Release Date: September 20th, 2022

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown in combination with certain plugins that change the standard login page URL.

Other:

• Changes the copy in the robots.txt comment.

Release Date: September 20th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.7 is out today! Weve rolled out some general enhancements, bug fixes, and security improvements in this release. Go check it out! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.7 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves the handling of fatal errors in the front-end by preventing Yoast SEO to run in the login page, allowing users to access their dashboard.
• Excludes empty custom post type sitemaps from sitemap_index.xml.
• Introduces a new filter wpseo_sitemap_post_type_first_links that can be used to add links at the start of the first sitemap page for post types. Props to @jamalbou.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug in the default editor where image elements would lead to repeated requests for that image source while editing content.

Other:

• Adds new disabled toggles to the Crawl settings tab in the General page.

Release Date: August 31st, 2022

Other:

• Fixes compliance with the wordpress.org plugin guidelines.

Release Date: August 23rd, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.6 is out today! In this release, weve rolled out some general enhancements. In addition, weve improved the performance of Yoast SEO on bigger, more complex sites. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.6 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug in the Classic Editor where clicking on the SEO link inside the publish box would not always scroll the SEO analysis into view.
• Fixes a bug where an emoji in our replacement variable editors would not be entirely removed when the backspace/delete button is hit.
• Fixes a bug where a redirect to our installation success page could happen on admin AJAX calls.

Other:

• Adds a "Search engines discouraged" notification in the Yoast SEO dashboard when the "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" WordPress setting is turned on.
• Removes the Ryte integration and deprecates all the relevant classes. More information about this can be found at yoa.st/ryte-deprecation.

Release Date: August 9th, 2022

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on the front-end when Yoast SEO 19.5 was used with an older version of Yoast SEO Premium.

Release Date: August 9th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.5 is out today! This release includes more fixes and enhancements to enjoy. We've also made adjustments to our schema implementation, changing the order in which schema nodes are output. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.5 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds the site logo and name as default values in the first time configuration and search appearance.
• Changes the order in which Schema nodes are output from Organization / Person > WebSite > WebPage > Article to Article > WebPage > WebSite > Organization / Person. This fixes validation issues for the Schema validator and puts the most important Schema content first.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a text starting with a double quotation mark followed by a space(s) broke the analysis.
• Fixes a bug where text which includes the non-breaking space character ( ) is not highlighted correctly.
• Fixes a bug where the Algolia integration could not be controlled at network level.
• Fixes a bug where the score indicator in the classic editor would not update the hovering text when the score changed.
• Fixes a bug where the score indicators of the overview pages and admin bar where inconsistent. The taxonomy overview and admin bar score indicators now uses red to indicate Focus keyphrase not set. The admin bar score indicator now shows blue when set to noindex.

Other:

• Hides the \"Save changes\" button in the \"Integrations\" tab in the \"Yoast SEO > General\" page.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 5.9.

Release Date: July 26th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.4 is out today! In this release, weve rolled out some improvements to our Schema structured data implementation. Additionally, we've fixed several bugs and added a couple of small enhancements to ensure you get the best user experience with Yoast SEO. But that's not all, we also have a new integration page coming in this release. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.4 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Enhances the Integrations page and relocates it in the Yoast SEO sidebar menu.
• Improves Schema for archive pages by using the featured image of the first post as primaryImageOfPage and by removing potentialAction.
• Improves Schema for attachment pages by setting the proper primaryImage attribute.
• Allows marking inside of Classic editor blocks in the Block/Gutenberg editor.
• Improves the text analysis by adding curly () and angular quotation marks ().
• Improves the text analysis by filtering out all versions of the ampersand (&).
• Removes the date from the meta description for WooCommerce products.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a notice was shown indicating that the Flesch reading ease score has moved from the readability analysis to the Insights for languages that do not have Flesch reading ease support.
• Fixes a bug where an Undefined index: SERVER_NAME warning would be triggered in cronjobs or WP CLI commands.

Release Date: July 12th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.3 is out today! In this release, weve rolled out some improvements to our Schema structured data implementation. In addition, we also added an Insights tab with information about your content, improved our content analyses and a whole lot more. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.3 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds an Insights tab to the editors which contains the Flesch reading ease score and feedback, (estimated) reading time, and word count. Since the Flesch reading ease score has been moved to the insights tab, it is removed from the readability analysis.
• Changes the @id of the main Schema WebPage node to be just the permalink for the current page, for interoperability with other plugins.
• Changes the logic of the Schema generation to prefer featured image and in-content images instead of OpenGraph and Twitter images.
• Uses the site logo set in the customizer as the logo in our Schema Organization output when a site has not set a logo in the Yoast SEO settings.
• Improves the author meta tag to be displayed only on posts.
• Adds a wpseo_meta_author hook to filter the content of the author meta tag.
• Improves sentence recognition for German by disregarding ordinal numbers as potential sentence boundaries.
• Adds canonical HTTP headers from RSS feeds to their parent URLs (for instance your homepage, or specific categories or tags), so the feeds themselves don't show up in search results.
• Makes sure the link tag in the RSS feeds' channel section links to the most specific URL possible (for instance the category or tag the RSS feed is for) instead of the homepage.
• Makes sure the title separator chosen in Yoast SEO is used for RSS feed titles too.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the focus keyphrase in the Wincher integration table on posts and terms would not be marked with an asterisk.
• Fixes a bug where a warning would be triggered when author data wasn't available for a post.
• Fixes a bug where disabled settings in the General page would be set to Off upon saving the settings form.
• Fixes a bug where the desktop preview would show a truncated title, while the title length progress bar and title width assessment would indicate that the title length was still within the limits.
• Fixes a bug where the keyphrase density assessment errors, or fails to mark the found keyphrases in the text, when using keyphrases that include some regular expression control characters, for example brackets.

Release Date: June 28th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.2 is out today! In this release, we've rolled out some improvements to the content and SEO analyses and we've added an integration with WordProof to timestamp privacy pages on the blockchain. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.2 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• NEW: Adds an integration with WordProof, which allows for improving the trustworthiness of the privacy policy and terms and conditions pages by adding a timestamp.
• Adds support for webp images for OpenGraph output.
• Adds a notice that displays when Yoast SEO Premium is installed but not activated prompting the user to activate it.
• Adds a new filter wpseo_change_home_url that allows changing the URL checked by the Ryte integration, to support more versatile hosting setups.
• Adds a meta author tag to ensure that LinkedIn picks up the name of a post author properly.
• Adds the name of the article author to the author section of the Article schema piece, to ensure that Pinterest picks up the name of a post author properly.
• Enables sorting on the SEO and readability score columns on the post overview page.
• Ensures the Bing XML sitemap ping is only sent if IndexNow is disabled.
• Prevents XML sitemap pings for blogs that aren't public.
• Improves the content analysis by excluding blockquote HTML elements.
• Improves the sentence recognition by disregarding abbreviations and initials as potential sentence boundaries.
• Improves the text analysis by not splitting sentences on semicolon ;.
• Improves the text analysis by supporting sentence detection for declarative sentences in quotation marks.
• Improves the text analysis in Elementor by not always splitting on ellipsis … regardless of whether the next sentence has a valid beginning or not.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug that would cause the First-time configuration to crash when completing indexation with the Yoast admin bar menu hidden.
• Fixes a bug where filtering the OpenGraph and Twitter image to a URL containing ampersands would lead to encoding issues.
• Fixes a bug where HTML tags in the og:description meta tag would be displayed encoded instead of being removed completely.
• Fixes a bug where the sitemap image:loc URLs containing ampersands would lead to encoding issues.
• Fixes a bug where notices would show an abnormally large heading in Yoast SEO Premium page.

Other:

• Renames the 'Keyphrase in title' SEO assessment to 'Keyphrase in SEO title'.

Release Date: June 14th, 2022

Yoast SEO 19.1 is out today! In this release, we've rolled out some improvements that make the content and SEO analyses more flexible. We've also expanded our range of crawl settings in Premium. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.1 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves text analysis by splitting text on full-stop only when the next sentence is preceded by a whitespace.
• Prompts users to set up their site in order to take advantage of all SEO features.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the "Check links to this URL" option on admin bar menu would lead to an error page on setups with home URL different from the site URL. Props to @suascat.
• Fixes a bug where the network setting for the crawl cleanup feature would default to Disable when the super admin saved settings before upgrading/installing Premium.
• Fixes a bug which caused the Spanish transition word para ilustrar to not be recognized by the transition words assessment.

Other:

• Adds an informative error message to the steps of the First-time configuration should an error occur.
• Adds dismissable weekly webinar promo banners to Yoast settings pages & block/Elementor editor sidebars.
• Adds new disabled toggles to the Crawl settings tab in the General page.
• Improves handling of OAuth errors in the Wincher integration and clears refresh tokens that seem to be invalid.

Release Date: May 31st, 2022

Say hi to Yoast SEO 19.0! This release helps make your sitemaps available to Bing, we've updated Yoast SEO to add your XML sitemap link(s) to your robots.txt file if you want. Plus: we've fixed a couple of bugs with Elementor and our readability analyses. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.0 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Following a change of policy by Bing, we now reference the XML sitemap in the robots.txt file to make it discoverable for search engines.
• Changes Disallow: /wp-admin/ to Disallow: in the default robots.txt file to follow our best-practice guide.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where an error in saving the Site representation step of the First-time configuration would not block the advancement to the next step.
• Fixes a bug where editing an existing post created in the Block editor in Elementor would result in an analysis result discrepancy.
• Fixes a bug where items in lists were not excluded for the readability assessment that checks whether consecutive sentences do not begin with the same words.
• Fixes a bug where outdated information is shown in the First-time configuration Social profiles step
• Fixes a bug where saving an invalid organization name in the First-time configuration would fail without feedback.
• Fixes a bug where the schema would not be updated with the new logo when the user changed it via the First-time Configuration.
• Fixes a bug where the titles of the steps in the First-time configuration would not be translated.
• Fixes a bug where users would be able to leave a step containing errors by clicking another step's edit button.

Other:

• Adds a Crawl settings tab in the General page with an upsell to Premium.
• Adds a Redirects page with an upsell to Premium.
• Deprecates the configuration workout classes.
• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 6.0.

Release Date: May 17th, 2022

Yoast SEO 18.9 is out now! In this release, we have improved the first experience users have with the plugin. The first-time configuration takes users by the hand and guides them in properly setting everything up so that search engines understand their site. Make sure to run that first-time configuration to see if youve filled everything in correctly! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.9 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds an installation successful page to welcome first-time users.
• Introduces the First-time configuration, replacing and improving the Configuration Workout.
• Renames the main admin menu item to Yoast SEO instead of SEO.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug that would lead to race conditions when using persistent object caching.
• Fixes a bug where a 403 error page would be thrown when a user tried to access the old configuration wizard.
• Fixes a bug where our How To and FAQ blocks would not handle focus correctly when using WordPress 6.0.
• Fixes a bug where the global var $post is sometimes modified unexpectedly. Props to grantalltodavid.

Other:

• Adds a Premium badge to the Workouts menu item.
• Updates the look of the Accounts tab in the Social page.

Release Date: May 6th, 2022

Did you catch the latest update from Google? Today they made some small changes to how they read XML sitemaps. But you dont have to worry about that - today's Yoast SEO 18.8 update already applies the latest standards. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.8 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Removes XML sitemap image properties title and caption following deprecation by Google.

Release Date: May 3rd, 2022

Meet Yoast SEO 18.7: a small Yoast SEO update, fixing several bugs and adding enhancements. We improved our Schema structured data implementation in this release and fine-tuned our SEO analyses. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.7 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves the Schema by changing the @id for images for Person and Organization including the logo attribute for the latter, to have a more proper format.
• Adds a wpseo_schema_graph filter to allow filtering the entire Schema graph.
• Removes penalising for H1 that is not at the beginning of the text body.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug in the Schema where the thumbnailUrl attribute of the Article object would be wrong if the post had an Open Graph or Twitter image.
• Fixes typos of several types in brand names and the word metadata. Props to NekoJonez.

Release Date: April 19th, 2022

Meet Yoast SEO 18.6: a small Yoast SEO update, fixing a number of bugs, including several bugs related to the Wincher integration. With the Wincher integration, you can track the rankings of your articles in the search results. If you havent checked that feature out, please do so! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.6 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a version mismatch caused broken styling in WooCommerce select fields when linking products.
• Fixes a bug where keyphrases could show up multiple times in Wincher table.
• Fixes a bug where the Wincher connection flow would fail on certain installations.
• Fixes a bug where the Wincher integration could throw a fatal error on PHP 8.0+.

Other:

• Adds a disabled Wincher integration toggle to the Network admin/Multisite Integrations tab.

Release Date: April 5th, 2022

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would occur on the site health page if WordFence was installed and active.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would occur on PHP 5.6.

Release Date: April 5th, 2022

Say hi to Yoast SEO 18.5! You'll find a number of fixes and enhancements. We've also included more improvements to the rebuild of the AIOSEO importer we introduced a few weeks ago. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.5 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds a preliminary validation of All-in-One SEO data before importing it into Yoast SEO.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the URL preview inside the snippet editor would not consistently reflect the permalink in the Block editor.
• Fixes a bug where the Customize URL would be incorrectly escaped in our health checks. Props to BronsonQuick.
• Fixes a bug where in certain edge cases a database error would show during clean-up of All-in-One SEO data.
• Fixes a bug where reusable block content would not be updated in our analysis when changed in the editor.
• Fixes a bug where an error about incorrect values in the indexables table would be displayed on certain database setups. Props to junaidbhura.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be displayed in the Search Appearance options when using WordPress version 5.8.3 and below with themes without title-tag support.
• Fixes a bug where sitemap locations would change once the number of entries exceeded that of the first page.
• Fixes a bug where Yoast modals would close after opening after editing content in Elementor.

Other:

• Sets the minimum required WordPress version to 5.8.

Release Date: March 22nd, 2022

Other:

• Reverts the 18.4 release due to errors in the WordProof integration.

Release Date: March 22nd, 2022

In Yoast SEO 18.4, we're launching a new integration with an innovative new service called WordProof. WordProof offers a way to add timestamps to your content and add those to the blockchain to prove ownership. Try it out now! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.4 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Adds the possibility to timestamp your Privacy Policy page and your WooCommerce Terms and Conditions page by use of a WordProof certificate.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Google preview would display wrong breadcrumbs for child pages.
• Fixes a potential error related to the has_ancestors column of our indexables table. Props to @junaidbhura.

Other:

• Sets the minimum required WordPress version to 5.8.

Release Date: March 8th, 2022

Meet Yoast SEO 18.3! For this release, we did another round of fixes and improvements. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.3 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves the importer so you can now import post_meta, robot_txt and search appearance options when moving from All-In-One SEO to Yoast SEO.
• Improves feedback strings for the Keyphrase Length assessment by making it explicit that we only count content words for languages with function word support.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Force rewrite titles option would be shown when a user was using a block-based theme.
• Fixes a bug where the title of a page would not get included in our get_head REST route.
• Fixes a bug where URLs in the XML sitemaps in certain edge cases would potentially be mangled, most notably when schema-relative URLs were being used.
• Fixes an issue where HowTo images would not be optimized if they did not start with the site URL.
• Fixes a bug where HowTo images with custom width would lose their custom width in the Twenty Twenty-One theme.

Other:

• Fixes an incompatibility with Elementor 3.6.0 where the React contents of the Yoast tab in Elementor were not rendered.

Release Date: February 22nd, 2022

Yoast SEO 18.2 is out today! This release includes more fixes and enhancements to enjoy. We improved the workings of the FAQ and How-to blocks. Happy optimizing! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.2 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Optimizes the images in FAQ and HowTo blocks to be more responsive and load faster.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the "Save changes" button would overlap with the admin sidebar on WordPress.com. Props to @DustyReagan.
• Fixes a bug where a (debug) deprecation message would show in the widget editor on WordPress 5.8 and above.
• Fixes a bug where a console warning would be thrown when adding a structured data block in the block editor, FSE editor or widget editor.

Other:

• Adds a filter to enable/disable creating indexables: Yoast\WP\SEO\should_index_indexables
• Adds an __isset magic method to ease working with helper surfaces. Props to @nlemoine.

Release Date: February 8th, 2022

Yoast SEO 18.1 is out today! This new release brings another round of bug fixes, plus a new way for us to handle the translations in our plugin leading to a smaller plugin size for you to install. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.1 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Changes the overall SEO score color on the post type overview pages to red when no keyphrase is set.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where images inserted into our FAQ or HowTo blocks would be rendered wider then their respective container when using a Block Theme.
• Fixes a bug where plugins that would initialize after our plugin would be unable to register certain plugin information or utilize certain hooks.
• Fixes a bug where capitalized keyphrases would show up twice in the Wincher SEO performance tracking modal.

Other:

• Switches from packaged script translations to those from wordpress.org in order to reduce ZIP size and disk usage.

Release Date: January 25th, 2022

Yoast SEO 18.0 is out now! This release contains a number of bug fixes and a couple of enhancements. We've enhanced schema presentation for non-alphanumeric languages and made several improvements in both the SEO and readability analysis of the Japanese language. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.0 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Limits a potentially slow query to certain routes, which makes it so it gets called fewer times.
• Enhances schema presentation for languages that are not alphanumeric. Props to sous-studio.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where removing an image from our Facebook Preview and Twitter Preview modals could lead to a confusing experience due to focus loss.
• Fixes a bug where clicking outside of a Yoast modal in the block editor would not close the modal.
• Fixes a bug where Japanese keyphrase enclosed in double quotes failed to be recognized in Keyword in meta description, Keyword density, Keyphrase distribution, Keyphrase in introduction, Keyphrase in image text and in Keyphrase in subheading assessments.
• Fixes a bug where synonyms enclosed in double quotes in the Link keyphrase assessment failed to be recognized even when there were exact matches in the anchor text.
  
• Fixes a bug where incorrect assessments were shown for keyphrases only consisting of function words in Japanese.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown if the link count of a corrupt indexable item would get updated.
• Fixes a bug where the title tag would not be correct in Full Site Editing themes.
• Fixes a bug where the text length assessment would count URLs from videos loaded in the article in the total amount of the copy characters in Japanese.
• Fixes a bug where Japanese full stops in a text would be counted as three characters instead of one.

Other:

• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 5.9.
• Sets WooCommerce tested up to version to 6.1.

Release Date: January 11th, 2022

Yoast SEO 17.9 is now available! Yoast SEO now comes with a keyphrase tracking tool powered by Wincher that lets you monitor your keyphrases, straight from the plugin! Make sure to try out this new keyphrase tracking feature and let us know what you think. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.9 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Introduces a keyphrase position tracking tool that gives insight into how your content ranks in the search results. Powered by Wincher.
• Improves Japanese text analysis results by adding functionality to segment Japanese texts into sentences and words.
• Adapts relevant assessments to count text length in characters instead of words in Japanese.
• Completes the readability analysis for Japanese by adding the transition words and sentence beginnings assessments.
• Improves keyword detection for Japanese by adding a function words list.
• Adapts Keyphrase in title scoring criteria for Japanese: the exact match keyphrase is not required for Japanese unless the keyphrase is enclosed in double quotes.
• Disables the Keyphrase in slug assessment for Japanese due to currently being unable to match keyphrases written in Japanese characters in slugs written in Latin characters.
• Improves the accuracy of the Estimated Reading Time results for Japanese.
• Adapts the recommended meta description length and meta description preview limit for Japanese.
• Improves the Workouts overview for mobile screens.
• Makes sure we don't output the same sameAs URL twice on Person and Organization.
• Adds "Blog Post" / BlogPosting as a potential Schema Article type.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when using PHP 8.1.
• Fixes a bug where the og:image:type meta would not be output correctly. Props to @dodomorandi.
• Fixes a bug where the incoming link count of a post would not return to zero if all incoming links were removed.
• Fixes a bug where the meta description would get trimmed to an empty string if the text doesn't have any space. Props to @waviaei.
• Fixes a bug where Link keyphrase assessment would not find a match when the keyphrase is enclosed in double quotes.
• Fixes a bug where <br> tags with attributes in the text would not be converted to paragraph tags. As a result some long paragraphs in the text might not have been highlighted in the Paragraph length assessment.

Other:

• Improves compatibility with PHP 8.1 by adding validations and handling deprecations.
• Reverts the removal of the deprecated WPSEO_Frontend class.
• Changes the font size of the alerts from 14px to 13px.

Release Date: December 14th, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.8 is out now and ready for you to download. In this release, we fix a number of bugs and added a few enhancements for you to enjoy! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.8 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Improves the user direction in the configuration workout.
• Adds a sleep interval to the WP CLI index command to limit server load while this command is running. Props to roborourke.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where on small screens the advanced setting's search engine follow checkbox would have a misplaced center.
• Fixes a bug where the styling of the introduction dialog in Elementor would be broken due to changes in Elementor.
• Fixes a bug where the reading time functionality for languages other than English would incorrectly output English reading speed values.
• Fixes a bug where certain text strings in the Google, Facebook and Twitter previews would not be translated.
• Fixes a bug where the state of indexation was not persisted when switching between workouts and the workouts page.
• Fixes a bug where the Workouts page wouldn't display translations.

Other:

• Fixes some styling issues in the configuration workout.
• Prevents SEO managers from changing the site description in the configuration workout.
• Optimizes and compresses several .png images to reduce their size. Props to lowwebtech.

Release Date: December 1st, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the notification to start configuring Yoast SEO would also been shown on existing installations.
• Fixes a bug where Yoast addons would not inherit the auto-update settings from Yoast SEO.
• Fixes a bug where changing the auto-update settings of another plugin could stop Yoast addons from being auto-updated.

Release Date: November 30th, 2021

Meet Yoast SEO 17.7! This release introduces a new configuration workout to help you set up the Yoast SEO plugin properly from the get-go. Get the basic settings right in Yoast SEO and create a solid foundation for your SEO! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.7 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Replaces the configuration wizard with a configuration workout, which makes it easier to configure Yoast SEO for your website.
• Adds a link to the archive page for the content types in the Search Appearance settings. Props to felipelousantos.
• Adds a few more French transition words to be recognised by the transition words assessment. Props to Cellophile.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where non-passive Greek words ending in - or - were previously recognized as passive. Props to artemidaspatanews.
• Fixes a bug where some post types would cause a PHP warning about custom fields.
• Fixes a bug where memory issues could occur when indexing a site with large amounts of terms assigned to many posts.

Release Date: November 16th, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.6 is out today! This new release brings several fixes and enhancements to improve how the plugin works. And were getting it ready for the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release. Go check it out! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.6 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Enhances the upgrade flow for add-ons by considering the minimum required WP version before showing any available updates.
• Enables the Schema Article type for any post type supporting authors.
• Removes the placeholder texts for title and description inputs in the Google preview and Social preview since they have no semantic value.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the page post type wasn't allowed to display an Article piece in the Schema.
• Fixes a bug where the content inside of reusable blocks would not be analyzed correctly.

Other:

• The plugin will no longer block installation on PHP 8.0+ when installed via Composer.
• Deprecates the wpseo_schema_article_post_types filter.

Release Date: November 2nd, 2021

Say hello to Yoast SEO 17.5! Or maybe would fit better, as this release introduces Greek readability support. Plus: youll also be able to find | and ~ title separators again. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.5 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements:

• Completes the readability analysis for Greek by adding the transition words, sentence beginnings and passive voice assessments.
• Improves keyword detection for Greek by adding a function words list.
• Reduces the right padding of the collapsible sidebar buttons to match the block editor's new styling.
• Restores the | and ~ separators.
• Reduces the right padding of the collapsible sidebar buttons to match Gutenberg's new styling.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the analysis highlight button would be visible on tags, categories, and custom taxonomies even though we don't support highlighting for those types.
• Fixes a bug where links to items on the same page were incorrectly identified as links to other pages, leading to an incorrect result on the Link keyphrase assessment.

Release Date: October 19th, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.4 is out today! This release comes with several fixes and enhancements to help database performance on larger sites by cleaning up data and streamlining retrieval. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.4 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves two queries used to determine whether or not a site has been fully processed using our SEO data optimization. This should prevent potential slowdowns in extremely large sites.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the url property in the search page schema would be empty.
• Fixes a bug where a duplicate canonical tag was output for web stories created with the Web Stories plugin. Props to swissspidey.
• Fixes a bug where a race condition could occur that caused the rewrite rules to be flushed on every page request when using a persistent cache like Redis. This may speed up your sites load times if its using persistent caching.

Release Date: October 5th, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.3 is out today! This release includes general bug fixes to some SEO assessments and improvements to indexables data management. Now is as good a time as any to start optimizing your content with Yoast SEO! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.3 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves the accuracy of the Keyphrase in slug assessment by correctly detecting multi-word keyphrases with at least one hyphenated word in the slug.
• Changes the default color for overall scores to red.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the meta description bar indicator color would not always match the color of the assessment bullet.
• Fixes a bug where the placement variables Category, Name and Tag would not show up in the snippet preview.
• Fixes a bug where the path of open graph images of the JSON head would be incorrect.

Other:

• Adds version management to our indexables framework; this makes the SEO Optimization process more robust, and prepares for future features.

Release Date: September 28th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug that could lead to a fatal error in the breadcrumbs block for auto-draft posts.

Release Date: September 21st, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.2 is out now! Yoast SEO comes with many powerful tools that will help you write SEO-proof and readable texts. And as of today, you can also work on your readability in the Farsi language. Readable content is awesome content! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 17.2 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Completes the readability analysis for Farsi by adding the transition words, sentence beginnings and passive voice assessments, and by adjusting the sentence length assessment to make it more appropriate for the Farsi language.
• Improves keyword detection for Farsi by adding more categories to the list of function words. E.g., general adjectives and adverbs category, conjunctions, and articles.
• Cleans up indexables for posts with an auto-draft post-status, in order to speed-up your admin pages.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where indexables would be created for post auto-drafts when the SEO optimization is run.

Other:

• Loads our help beacon on the workouts page.

Release Date: September 7th, 2021

Yoast SEO 17.1 is out today! In this release, youll find a couple of small changes thatll help you write great titles that stand up to Googles scrutiny. It also includes some behind-the-scenes improvements, including several fixes for our indexables data management. For now, please enjoy Yoast SEO and write the best possible content in the language of your choice! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 17.1 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves the performance of saving posts by excluding unchanged items, especially noticeable on posts with many links.
• Stops showing the SEO Optimization notification on non-production sites.
• Improves the filtering of function words in Dutch, English, Indonesian, Russian, and Spanish by including time-related words like 'minute'.
• Updates the styling of our Google preview, to reflect the updated styling of the Google search results.
• Stops warning users when they have short titles, because concise, specific titles are less likely to be altered by Google.
• Removes the | and ~ separator options from titles, because Google frequently replaces these in search results.

Release Date: August 24th, 2021

Say hello to Yoast SEO 17.0! This release includes some behind-the-scenes improvements, including several fixes for our indexables data management. For now, please enjoy Yoast SEO and write the best possible content in the language of your choice! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 17.0 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Speeds up load times of admin pages by preventing unnecessary counts of unindexed objects.
• Cleans up items from the database that are not used anymore, thereby reducing the size of many sites' database.
• Improves the overall performance and responsiveness in Gutenberg.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Save all button in the bulk editor did not work.
• Fixes a bug where the Existing column in the bulk editor did not update after save.

Other:

• Updates the message that recommends you to install WooCommerce SEO when WooCommerce is installed.

Release Date: August 10th, 2021

Meet Yoast SEO 16.9: This release comes with two new image SEO assessments and improved performance. Happy updating! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.9 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Splits the Image alt attributes assessment into two assessments. The Images assessment checks if the page contains at least one image. The Image Keyphrase assessment checks if the images have alt texts, and if those alt texts contain the keyphrase.
• Makes the Transition Word assessment not applicable when the text has less than 200 words, as transition words are less relevant for very short texts.
• Reduces the load time of admin pages, by reducing the number of database queries and optimizing the queries themselves.
• Improves the performance of large posts in the Block editor, Classic editor and Elementor.
• Adds error details to the error message if SEO optimization fails for some unforeseen reason.
• Cleans up indexables for WooCommerce check-out pages from the indexable table, in order to improve performance.
• Adds post link indexing and term link indexing to the wp yoast index WP-CLI command.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the robots meta tag could have incorrect values if users called the wp_robots filter to set certain values to false. Props to Roy-Orbison.

Release Date: July 27th, 2021

Yoast SEO 16.8 is out today! This release comes with an updated readability analysis with support for two new languages: Norwegian and Slovak. Did you know that Yoast SEO is nearing language support for twenty languages? Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.8 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Completes the readability analysis for Slovak by adding the transition words, sentence beginnings and passive voice assessments.
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Slovak by filtering out function words such as som, a, jedna, e.
• Completes the readability analysis for Norwegian by adding the transition words, sentence beginnings and passive voice assessments.
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Norwegian by expanding the list of function words that are filtered out.
• Adds the first two steps of the Premium cornerstone workout.
• Throws a notification in the plugins page to users who have an expired subscription.
• Improves the performance of background requests (admin-ajax calls).

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where paginated static frontpages would fail to output a valid breadcrumb.
• Fixes a bug where the image selectors in the search appearance and social settings did not have a screen reader text.

Release Date: July 13th, 2021

Meet Yoast SEO 16.7! This release comes with extended support for headless WordPress. Yoast SEO comes with a REST API that developers can use to access our metadata in a headless WordPress installation. In Yoast SEO 16.7, were making more data available and also in a different format: JSON. Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.7 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Upgrades our REST API to include individual keys/values for all of our meta tags, data and schema output. Read all about it in this in-depth explanation about our REST API.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a database entry would be added in the indexables table every time a WooCommerce order was created.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO optimization could run indefinitely when the database contained at least 25 faulty indexables without a permalink.
• Fixes a bug where the Advanced section and Schema tab wouldn't be visible in the metabox for Editors. Props to jordif.

Release Date: July 1st, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where many Premium editor features would not work if Yoast SEO was updated to version 16.6 while Yoast SEO Premium was still on version 16.5 or lower.

Release Date: June 29th, 2021

Yoast SEO 16.6 comes with a new round of improvements and fixes. Weve updated the analysis to exclude sentences inside tables and table captions from the consecutive sentences assessment. Enjoy! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.6 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Updates SearchAction schema to comply with Google's updated specification.
• Excludes sentences inside tables and table captions from the consecutive sentences assessment.
• Adds adjacent relative links (rel="prev" and rel="next") for WooCommerce shop pages. Props to stodorovic.
• Adds increased compatibility for LiteSpeed web servers. Props to J-Rey.
• Adds adjacent relative links for WooCommerce shop pages. Props to stodorovic.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where an error would be shown on the page overview and post overview when the website's MySQL database was run in ANSI-mode. Props to stodorovic.
• Fixes a bug where shortcodes would be removed from the Open Graph description even when they were explicitly added. Props to Lomerill.
• Fixes a bug where using the wpseo_schema_{@type} filter would result in a fatal error.
• Fixes a bug where the last breadcrumb item was stripped in breadcrumb Schema output on subsequent pages of a static posts page.

Release Date: June 15th, 2021

Yoast SEO 16.5 is out today! This release comes with a number of fixes and enhancements. For instance, easier social media settings, better understanding of the Turkish and Czech languages and improvements to the breadcrumbs schema output. Read all about it in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves passive voice recognition for Turkish.
• Improves accuracy of the Czech passive voice assessment by separating clauses based on punctuation marks, and by expanding the list of stopwords.
• Changes the breadcrumbs schema output so Google can understand it better.
• Moves the social settings for the homepage from the Social > Facebook tab, to Search Appearance > General.
• Improves the organization of the Search Appearance > General tab, with distinct collapsibles for the Title Separator, the Homepage settings and the Schema.org settings.
• Introduces a notice to be displayed in Search Appearance > General in place of the Social settings for the Homepage when Open Graph is disabled.
• Introduces an image validation warning for the Homepage social image and the Default social image to warn about unsupported file extensions.
• Improves spacing, headings and toggle labels in the Search Appearance settings, and makes the forms more consistent.
• Less is more: removes a whole bunch of ads from the Yoast SEO admin screens.
• Optimizes subscription validations made by Premium add-ons.
• Improves the truncation of the primary_focus_keyword field in the database to handle multibyte characters. Props to rickhurst.
• Introduces a partial integration of the Yoast SEO meta box in the Web Stories WordPress editor. Props to swissspidy.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where max-image-preview:large would be output in the robots meta tag in combination with noimage.

Other:

• Moves the 'Force rewrite titles' toggle into a separate paper in the General Search Appearance settings.

Release Date: June 1st, 2021

Meet Yoast SEO 16.4: This brand-new version of Yoast SEO comes with a rewritten language analysis, plus a newly supported language: Czech. People who write in this language can now fully use our tools to improve their content. We hope you enjoy this update! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.4 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Completes the readability analysis for Czech by adding the transition words, sentence beginnings and passive voice assessments.
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Czech by filtering out function words such as dvou, tvmu, njak.
• Improves the accuracy of passive voice detection in Portuguese.
• Adds the missing Polish transition word jak wiemy (props to @jarekherisz).
• Makes all twitter meta tags self-closing, for the sake of consistency and to allow pages to pass validation in some tools.
• Improves the UX consistency between the notification counter in the admin bar and in the sidebar.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where new feature notification couldn't be dismissed.
• Fixes a bug where the primary term for custom post types was not always properly set for posts edited in the Gutenberg editor.
• Fixes a bug where the schema output could be incorrect on terms with the same ID as the static posts page.

Other:

• Adds a missing space to the feedback text in the keyphrase in introduction assessment.

Release Date: May 18th, 2021

Out now: Yoast SEO 16.3! This release helps you with one of the key aspects of modern SEO: Structured data. Yoast SEO 16.3 comes with a lot of enhancements for the Schema.org implementation. Enjoy! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.3 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds the Table of Contents accessibility feature to the Article Schema with a fallback to the WebPage Schema, when using the Yoast Table of Contents block.
• Adds the url property to the Author Schema on a post when author archives are enabled.
• Adds the wordCount and thumbnailUrl attributes to Article schema pieces.
• Allows adding multiple FAQ blocks to a post or page.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a malformed Organization piece would be added to the Schema output if the company logo was an unsupported image.
• Fixes a bug where we would accidentally include unminified CSS files in the zip. This led to an unnecessary zip size increase.
• Fixes a bug where the complete options array could be re-saved in the database at each frontend request.
• Fixes a bug where both noindex and index values could be added to the robots meta tag on the WordPress login screen.
• Fixes a rare bug where the name property could be missing in the breadcrumb Schema due to plugin conflicts.

Other:

• Adds the yoast_display_gutenberg_compat_notification filter to allow disabling the Gutenberg compatibility notification.
• Adds the wpseo_schema_person_data filter to enable the filtering of Person Schema by the user's ID.
• Adds the Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_post_types_archive action at the end of the archive section of the custom post types in Search Appearance.
• Deprecates the wpseo_admin_page_meta_post_types action in favor of the new Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_post_types_beforearchive action.
• Deprecates the wpseo_admin_page_meta_taxonomies action in favor of the new Yoast\WP\SEO\admin_taxonomies_meta action.
• Improves the layout of the Search Appearance collapsibles.
• Improves spacing between settings sections in the Search Appearance page.
• Replaces all occurrences of 'SEMrush' by 'Semrush' to reflect Semrush's rebranding.

Release Date: April 28th, 2021

Say hi to Yoast SEO 16.2! This release focuses on improving stability and fixing several bugs. It also includes several enhancements. Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.2 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Enables/disables auto-updates for the ACF Content Analysis for Yoast SEO plugin when auto-updates for Yoast SEO are enabled/disabled.
• Improves the accessibility of the social sharing links in the post publish panel.
• Changes the output of the articleSection and keywords attributes of the Article schema to an array instead of comma-separated values.
• Improves the performance by optimizing the way Article schema is built, saving a query on pageload.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where saving posts containing URLs without protocol would fail or trigger warnings.
• Fixes a bug where the current webpage would not always be referenced correctly in the breadcrumb schema output.
• Fixes a bug where robots metadata were not returned when requesting metadata via our get_head REST route.
• Fixes a bug where the primary term isn't saved at the right moment resulting in having an unexpected term for the breadcrumbs.
• Fixes a bug where our add-ons would not automatically be updated if Yoast SEO was the first plugin for which the user ever enabled auto-updates.

Other:

• Adds the 'wpseo_enable_editor_features_' . $post_type filter to allow users to show the Yoast SEO metabox on non-public post types if these are accessible. Props to jondcampbell.

Release Date: April 6th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when creating a new Elementor template or editing an existing one.

Release Date: April 6th, 2021

Yoast SEO 16.1 is out today! It features several enhancements and fixes that make the plugin chug along nicely. Happy updating! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.1 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves the performance of the SEO data indexing process by optimizing the queries used for fetching unindexed objects.
• Adds your OpenGraph or Twitter image as the main image in Schema when they're set.
• Adds contentUrl to the schema image output.
• Improves the performance of the post indexing. Props to Ovidiu Liuta.
• Improves the URL in the Google preview when in the desktop mode.
• Improves the performance of loading the person & organization logo in Schema.
• Improves the performance by optimizing several calls to WP path and basename functions by using already defined and calculated constants.
• Removes the keyphrase highlighting in the mobile meta description to reflect new Google behavior.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the analysis highlight button would be visible in our Elementor integration even though we don't support it.
• Fixes a bug where a warning was shown on the Features settings page when running the plugin on PHP 8.0.
• Fixes a bug where a warning was shown on the Integrations settings page when running the plugin on PHP 8.0.
• Fixes a bug where, on a multisite installation, enabling/disabling auto-updates for Yoast SEO would not automatically enable/disable auto-updates for Yoast SEO Premium and the other Yoast add-ons.
• Fixes a bug where the breadcrumbs aren't updated properly when editing a post via the quick edit.
• Fixes a bug where the rewrite rules would not always be flushed on plugin activation.

Release Date: March 18th, 2021

Enhancements:

• Changes the deactivation prevention text on the Plugins page from Deactivate Yoast SEO Premium first to Required by Yoast SEO Premium to avoid confusion.

Release Date: March 16th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where in rare cases incorrect usage of WP_Query could lead to incorrect SEO data.

Release Date: March 16th, 2021

Yoast SEO 16.0: The Sweet Sixteen release is out! It comes with several fixes and improvements. Happy updating and thank you for using Yoast SEO! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 16.0 in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where invalid breadcrumbs would show PHP warnings.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a post ancestor was not an indexable.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when both Yoast SEO and Polylang for WooCommerce were installed, and the site contained WooCommerce variable products. Props to manooweb.

Other:

• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 5.7 and minimum supported WordPress version to 5.6.

Release Date: March 11th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the order of the robots values was suboptimal when running WordPress 5.7. Note that the order has no effect on how the values are interpreted.

Release Date: March 4th, 2021

Welcome to Yoast SEO 15.9.1! This release contains an improvement for the FAQ block schema output, and makes sure the plugin is compatible with WordPress Core's auto-update feature and robots changes. Read more about those changes in our post about Yoast SEO 15.9.1 and WordPress 5.7!

Enhancements:

• Removes mainEntityOfPage from our FAQ Schema block output and moves it to mainEntity on the WebPage output, fixing a Google parse issue with those FAQ blocks.
• Performance enhancements in the post indexable builder by skipping link creation on drafts.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where indexable creation caused compatibility problems with code that would hook in to new post creation.

Other:

• Adds a notification to prompt users to enable auto-updates for Yoast SEO, in case they also have auto-updates for WordPress Core enabled.
• Ensures compatibility with WordPress Core's robots meta tag by hooking into the wp_robots filter and using our settings there.
• Enables/disables auto-updates for the Yoast Woocommerce, News, Video and Local SEO plugins when auto-updates for Yoast SEO are enabled/disabled.

Release Date: February 23rd, 2021

Yoast SEO 15.9 is out! This release comes with performance improvements and general enhancements. Happy updating and thanks for using Yoast SEO! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.9 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds a preview of the chosen image for the organization and person image, social images, Facebook front page image and Facebook default image.
• Improves interoperability and consistency in database queries.
• Improves the performance by preventing database queries for the homepage indexable.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the disabled style of the switch toggles didn't look right.

Release Date: February 10th, 2021

Say hi to Yoast SEO 15.8! This release comes with a brand-new breadcrumbs block for the block editor. Try it out and guide your users - and Google! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.8 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds a breadcrumbs block, allowing users to add breadcrumbs to a page or post using the block editor, or to a widget area using the Gutenberg plugin.
• Changes the default setting to enable breadcrumbs for the theme to true. This means themes that declare theme support for this feature automatically output Yoast breadcrumbs on every page. Existing installs will not be impacted by this change.
• Breadcrumbs settings can now always be edited, regardless of if the breadcrumbs are enabled for the theme.
• Like the block, the breadcrumbs shortcode is now always rendered, regardless of if the breadcrumbs are enabled for the theme.
• Improves the loading time of the posts overview page in the WordPress backend. Props to Rahe.
• Makes sure the breadcrumbs schema is always present, except on 404 pages.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the target indexable for relative links was not properly detected.
• Fixes a bug where scheme-relative links were not parsed correctly.
• Fixes a bug where paginated WooCommerce shop pages did not have the right canonical.
• Fixes a bug where custom capabilities could malfunction due to a race condition. Props to Jerome Charaoui.

Release Date: January 26th, 2021

Meet Yoast SEO 15.7! For this release, we thought wed remind you of the powerful content analysis in Yoast SEO - it helps you write awesome content that ranks! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.7 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Expands the readability analysis for Turkish:
  • Adds the transition words assessment.
  • Adds the consecutive sentences beginnings assessment.
  • Adds the sentence length assessment.
  • Adds the passive voice assessment.
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Turkish by filtering out function words such as birinci, ikinci, nc.
• Adds the advanced snippet variables to the Social previews of our Elementor integration.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where empty author archive pages would be indexed when the author had published a custom post-type that was not shown on his/her author archive page. Props to stodorovic.

Other:

• Changes the wording on the my.yoast.com connect error shown in Health Check when a Yoast premium plugin is enabled, to lead with what the user's problem is.
• Removes the release notification as the added benefit of having it is minimal.

Release Date: January 12th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where notifications in the notification center would not be dismissible on sites using FastCGI.

Release Date: January 12th, 2021

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the estimated reading time would not be shown when posts that were created before Yoast SEO 15.6 were shared on Slack.

Other:

• Adjusts the default words per minute for the estimated reading time from 250 words per minute to 200 words per minute.

Release Date: January 12th, 2021

Say hi to Yoast SEO 15.6! In the latest version of Yoast SEO, youll find a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements. Happy updating! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.6 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves keyphrase recognition in Norwegian by filtering out function words such as 'tredje', 'deres' and 'noen'.
• Improves the performance of the taxonomy sitemap generation. Props to mikeyarce.
• Adds the Tag, Category and Primary Category snippet variables in the Google preview of our Elementor integration.
• Adds advanced snippet variables to the Google preview of our Elementor integration.
• Ensures that there's always a meta description for Web Stories. Props to swissspidy.
• Extends the plugin conflict list.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the non-indexable custom post types elementor_library and oembed_cache would be saved to the indexable table.
• Fixes a bug where the SEMrush modal would trigger errors and wouldn't display a chart when all the Trend values were zero.
• Fixes a bug where very large WordPress installations would experience time-outs because the database would be overloaded with duplicate indexable IDs.
• Fixes a bug where the social preview placeholders and info text would not be translatable.

Other:

• Deprecates the WPSEO_Validator class because it was not used anymore. Props to rafaelbernard.
• Fixes the URL to the Travis badge on our open source GitHub repository. Props to rodrigoprime.
• Makes the integration with Web Stories for WordPress more robust. Props to swissspidy.

Release Date: December 15th, 2020

Out now: Yoast SEO 15.5! You can easily check if you are doing a great job in terms of the readability of your text when writing in Hungarian! Yoast SEO helps you produce a powerful piece of content thats easy to read. It also gives you feedback on what to improve! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.5 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves and expands Hungarian language support:
  • Improves keyphrase recognition and internal linking by filtering function words such as 'harmadik', 'titek', and 'valaki'.
  • Improves the transition words assessment.
  • Adds the passive voice assessment.
  • Adds the consecutive sentences assessment to ensure variety in a text.
• Removes the Open Graph and Twitter author metadata on pages and other non-post post types.
• Adds breadcrumb Schema to the homepage.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where network-wide settings about the Enhanced Slack Sharing feature would not be saved.
• Fixes a bug where translations on the Search Appearance pages would be missing.
• Fixes a bug where subsites in a multisite network could have an enabled feature toggle for the Usage tracking feature, even though subsites never send tracking data.
• Fixes a bug where the Yoast SEO dashboard widget would still fetch data even when the dashboard itself was hidden.
• Fixes a bug where the TinyMCE editor on term edit pages would not load correctly when using WordPress 5.6.

Other:

• Removes support for the Facebook App ID, as Facebook has indicated this feature is deprecated on their side.
• Adds a notification that tells the user to install and activate the Yoast SEO Multilingual plugin when the WPML plugin is installed and activated.

Release Date: December 2nd, 2020

Its here: Yoast SEO 15.4! In this release, youll find a seamless, easy-to-use integration of Yoast SEO with Elementor. Building websites and optimizing content for the search engines now in one workflow! Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.4 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Introduces a seamless integration of Yoast SEO content analysis into the Elementor editor.
• Makes it possible to recognize forms of keyphrases in Arabic when they are preceded by certain multi-letter prefixes, e.g. ,, or .

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where post-sitemap.xml would cause a fatal error when the filter post_link required a WP_Post object. Props to stodorovic.
• Fixes a bug where the core default_hidden_columns filter would be broken. Props to thomasmb.
• Fixes a bug where memory could be exhausted on the page overview for users with a large number of pages.
• Fixes a bug where an ArgumentCountError would be thrown on the Search Appearance settings page when using PHP 8.0.
• Fixes a bug where disabling the tracking network-wide in a multisite environment did not automatically disable tracking on the sites in the network.
• Fixes a bug where tracking would send partial data.

Other:

• Provides YoastSEO->helpers->options->get_title_separator() as an alternative for the previously removed get_title_separator method.
• Adds a wpseo_previously_used_keyword_active filter to deactivate the Previously Used Keyword analysis assessment.

Release Date: November 17th, 2020

Out now: Yoast SEO 15.3! In this release, youll find full language support for Hebrew in our analysis! This makes it a lot more natural to optimize your posts and it lets you focus on the writing part. Read more about whats new in Yoast SEO 15.3 in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where no notification to reindex your site would be shown when the indexing process failed.
• Fixes a bug where no notification to reindex your site would be shown when changing the permalink structure, category base or home URL multiple times in a row and hiding the notification in between.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when there is no ctype extension loaded and ctype_digit had been polyfilled before.
• Fixes a bug where reindexing via the WP-CLI would not always repopulate the indexables tables.
• Fixes a bug where unfiltered HTML could be inserted in taxonomy descriptions by administrators and editors.
• Fixes a bug where the indexable permalinks could have an incorrect taxonomy base.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO optimization process sometimes had to be run twice before everything was correctly indexed.

Enhancements:

• Adds the following assessments for Hebrew:
  • Consecutive sentences assessment.
  • Sentence length assessment.
  • Transition words assessment.
  • Passive voice assessment.
• Does not mark the words 'annoyed', 'depressed', 'disappointed', and 'upset' as passives in English anymore, since most of the time they are closer to adjectives rather than passive verbs in meaning.
• Improves the results for the keyphrase distribution assessment for Swedish, Indonesian, Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi by allowing a partial match (instead of a full match) for long keyphrases (4 or more content words).

Other:

• Prevents the SEO optimization process from restarting automatically when the optimization tool is started via the link in the dashboard notification and the Yoast SEO Tools page is reloaded during indexing.

Release Date: November 2nd, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where AMP and W3C validation would break because Twitter meta tags would contain 'value' attributes instead of 'content' attributes.

Release Date: October 27th, 2020

Today, we are releasing Yoast SEO 15.2 into the wild. In this release, we've added an interesting improvement for Slack users better visibility for your content when your URL is shared on Slack. We also improved the performance of the plugin in the backend due to us loading less JavaScript. Read more about whats new in 15.2 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds an Open Graph integration for The Events Calendar plugin. Props to Luehrsen
• Sets the default schema type for Web Stories to Article. Props to swissspidy
• Adds enhanced Slack sharing tags on posts and pages.
• Adds a toggle for the above enhanced Slack sharing feature.
• Flushes the permalinks from the indexable tables when a custom taxonomy base changes, and shows a reindex notification in that case.
• Improves the loading times of admin pages where Yoast SEO is present.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where we linked to Google's Structured Data Test, which is deprecated. We now link to Google's Rich Results Test. Props to wormeyman
• Fixes a bug where the styling of the General tab in the network admin dashboard was broken.
• Fixes a bug where the German passive voice assessment would show an error when the text contained a participle enclosed within curly quotation marks (e.g., "getan").
• Fixes a bug where the WooCommerce product permalinks were not updated after a permalink structure change.
• Fixes a bug where the replacement variable dropdown menu was partially hidden for the description inputs in all preview modals.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on sites that did have curl installed but did not have the PHP curl extension installed.

Other:

• Removes the "Remind me in 7 days" link from the SEO data optimization notification on the Yoast SEO dashboard, which was shown for large sites with more than 2500 unindexed indexables. The notification can still be hidden by clicking the default dismiss button.
• Adds the wpseo_image_data filter to enable the filtering of image metadata. Props to spacedmonkey.

Release Date: October 15th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the indexing button on the Tools page would keep showing up because certain objects would be detected as requiring indexing but would not actually be indexed during the indexing process.

Release Date: October 14th, 2020

Wouldnt it be cool if you could get keyword data while working on your content in Yoast SEO? Well, we asked ourselves that same question and now we have an answer! Yes, you can now find related keyphrases inside the post editor. And its not any old data no, its powered by our good friends at SEMrush, a world-class provider of SEO and internet marketing tools! Read more about whats new in 15.1 in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds an integration with SEMrush to search for and compare search volume of related keyphrases.
• Moves the Ryte feature toggle to the new Integrations tab where the new SEMrush feature toggle also can be found.
• Merges the indexable and link indexing tools on the tools page into one process.
• Improves the user experience of the indexing tool on the tools page by showing its progress on the tools page itself, instead of in a separate pop-up modal.
• Prevents several processes from happening on non-production environments:
  • Indexing indexables.
  • Pinging search engines about XML sitemaps.
  • Sending tracking information.
  • Checking the indexability of the site with Ryte.
• Uses the website from a user's WordPress profile in that user's SameAs array in the Schema output.
• Flushes all permalinks from the indexables tables when the value of the permalink_structure option changes, and introduces a notification to ask for a reindex in that case.
• Flushes all permalinks from the indexables tables when the value of the home_url option changes, and introduces a notification to ask for a reindex in that case.
• Registers a cron job that checks whether the home_url was changed manually and resets the permalinks accordingly.
• Makes it possible to recognize keyphrases in Farsi when they have a negation prefix or an indefinite article (for example: ('car') in ('a car')).
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Farsi by filtering the function words such as , `,.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Yoast replacement variables plugin would not be available on edit terms page for usage by other plugins.
• Fixes a bug where the incoming link count for each post, as shown on the post overview page, was incorrect.

Other:

• Adds a filter (wpseo_dynamic_permalinks_enabled) to enable the dynamic permalink fallback. When this fallback is enabled, the indexable-based output of the permalink property is overridden by a permalink that is calculated on the fly. Using this is detrimental for performance but may be needed for some site setups.

Release Date: September 29th, 2020

Today, were launching Yoast SEO 15.0. This release features some awesome new additions and enhancements. Weve added full support for Arabic and made the Yoast SEO block editor sidebar fully-featured. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Introduces an advanced settings tab in the sidebar.
• Introduces buttons in the sidebar to open the Facebook and Twitter Preview in a modal.
• Changes the Google Preview modal styling to match the other new modals.
• Always shows the Google Preview editor fields and as a result removes the 'Edit snippet' button.
• Changes the styling of the Yoast SEO sidebar to match the standard Gutenberg styling.
• Slightly rearranges the order of items in the Yoast SEO sidebar.
• Adds a hover state styling to the items in the Metabox.
• Improves the English transition word assessment by adding the following words to the transition word list: 'note that', 'not only', 'initially', 'as opposed to'.
• Improves the keyphrase and prominent word recognition when words in the text occur with specific Arabic or Urdu punctuation marks.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the value of the schema @type could contain null.
• Fixes a bug where the archive, imageindex and snippet robot values would be output when noindex was present as well.
• Fixes a bug where the indexable permalinks could have an incorrect value when the term slug was changed.
• Fixes a bug where parts of the content of a password protected post could be output in the schema.
• Fixes a bug where the 'Stop counting' button in the text link counter modal wouldn't stop the counting of links.
• Fixes a bug where indexable hierarchies were not being created during bulk indexing.

Other:

• Adds the wpseo_sitemap_index_links filter to enable adding links to the sitemap index. Props to Joseph Paul.

Release Date: September 1st, 2020

Yoast SEO 14.9 comes with a new round of improvements, plus a new language-based enhancement: improved keyphrase recognition for Hebrew. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a JavaScript console warning was thrown on category edit pages.
• Fixes a bug where the page number was not shown in the breadcrumb for paginated series.
• Fixes a bug where the robots.txt and .htaccess file editor would not work due to get_home_path() not being a writable path. Props to druesome.
• Fixes a bug where port numbers in the indexable permalinks were missing (when applicable).
• Fixes a bug where the indexables table would contain incorrect permalinks for posts if the term slug had been changed and the post permalink contains the term slug.
• Fixes a bug where the indexables table would contain incorrect permalinks for pages if the slug of the parent page had been changed.
• Fixes a bug where a warning would occur when a query was unsuccessful while indexing post type archives. Props to Sekiphp.
• Fixes a bug where closing parentheses would always be regarded as sentence endings in RTL languages.
• Fixes a bug where closing parentheses would always be regarded as sentence endings when followed by an upper-case letter.

Enhancements:

• Adds an update notification for major and minor releases.
• Improves the SQL performance by not performing unnecessary update queries when updating a posts public status.
• Optimizes performance by preventing regular database queries.
• Improves keyphrase recognition in Polish by filtering more function words.
• Improves the feedback string in the Keyphrase in Subheadings assessment by making it more explicit.
• Improves all keyphrase-based assessments for Hebrew by filtering function words and allowing keyphrases to be recognized in the text when preceded by a prefix (e.g., or ).
• We already had a filter available to change the default Schema Article type (wpseo_schema_article_post_types), but it wasn't called anywhere. Now it is.

Other:

• Adds the weekly cron schedule to the cron_schedules filter to prevent overwriting the one WordPress adds. Props to peter-webbird.
• Merges the googlebot and bingbot meta tag values into the robots meta tag value and deprecates the Googlebot_Presenter and Bingbot_Presenter.

Release Date: August 25th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug in WordPress itself where script concatenation was causing JavaScript errors, which in turn led to Yoast SEO malfunctioning. This bug was introduced in WordPress 5.5. Were fixing it by disabling script concatenation entirely.

Release Date: August 18th, 2020

Get ready for a brand new version of Yoast SEO! In this version you'll find new Schema functionality, an improved readability analysis for Portuguese & Indonesian, and improved keyword recognition for right-to-left languages. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds a Schema section to the metabox and sidebar. This section allows the user to change their Schema settings on posts, pages and custom post types.
• Adds a new section to the Search Appearance settings. This section allows the user to change their Schema defaults for posts, pages and custom post types.
• Fixes an inconsistency in the feedback strings that are produced by the keyphrase in SEO title assessment.
• Improves the accuracy of the following assessments for right-to-left languages: sentence length, keyphrase in introduction, keyphrase distribution, keyphrase density, and keyphrase in meta description.
• Improves all keyphrase-based assessments for Arabic by filtering function words and by allowing keyphrases to be recognized in a text when preceded by a prefix (e.g., "" or "").
• Adds the following assessments for Indonesian: sentence beginnings, transition words and passive voice.
• Adds the following assessments for Portuguese: Flesch reading ease and passive voice.
• Cleans up Schema@typevalues:
  • If it's an array with multiple values, only output unique values.
  • If it's a single value, output it as a string instead of an array.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Yoast Dashboard widget would trigger an error when other plugins or temporary conditions would make the Yoast API response fail.
• Fixes a bug where block editor dependencies would be loaded unnecessarily on classic editor, causing issues with NextGEN gallery. Posts with NextGEN galleries that have been broken due to this bug will need to be re-saved.

Other:

• Sets the minimum WP version to 5.4.
• Optimizes the logic involved in default filters for our options. This should lead to a very small increase in performance as well as avoiding an edge case where the default filter would be removed.

Release Date: August 5th, 2020

Say hi to Yoast SEO 14.7, chock-full of enhancements to help you with your site's SEO. Have you heard about the addition of XML sitemaps in WordPress 5.5? The Yoast SEO plugin is completely prepared for this. We also have some great news for users of the Web Stories plugin. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds support for adding metadata to Web Stories (the web-story post type) from the Web Stories plugin. Props to swissspidy
• Shows a more specific notification about why the reindexing of SEO data is needed when the permalinks are reset or when the category base setting is changed.
• Redirects requests to the WordPress sitemaps to the appropriate Yoast sitemap, if the Yoast sitemaps are enabled.
• Adds the option for users to opt-in to allow Yoast to track some data about their site.
• Optimizes script loading by removing ver parameters from scripts and styles when they're not needed.
• Adds the Yoast logo to the Yoast block categories.
• Compatibility with WordPress 5.5: makes sure Yoast structured data blocks are found on more keywords and have examples in the block inserter.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would occur in sitemaps on sites where the home URL and site URL were different. Because the cause of this was a missing style sheet, the content of the sitemaps was still there, which means Google and other search engines could still reach the sitemaps and no SEO harm was done.
• Fixes a bug where reindexing would not be done for indexables without a permalink.
• Fixes a bug where an indexable's permalink remained unchanged when the categories prefix option was changed.
• Fixes a bug where an inline link that opens in a new window would render undefined in the aria-label.
• Fixes a bug where the indexables indexing process could not be started again without a page reload on the tools page if it failed.
• Fixes a bug where a console error would be thrown because wpseoShortcodePluginL10n was not defined.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO and Readability scores were no longer shown in the publish box in the classic editor.
• Fixes a bug where clicking the Readability score link in the classic editor would trigger an error.

Other:

• Enables the cornerstone content toggle for taxonomies.
• Adds the option to filter our Schema by @type.
• Removes the setting to show the date in the Google Preview. The date will now always be shown in post-type previews.
• Moves the running of the SEO data indexing process to the Yoast Tools page.

Release Date: July 21st, 2020

We have a new release for you: Yoast SEO 14.6. This release has some pretty cool enhancements. For example, weve added another helpful indicator in the editor that shows you your scores for a particular post quickly. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Improves the editing experience in the Social tab, and gives it a dab of fresh paint.
• In the sharing metadata used for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and many other sites, we now output the post title instead of the SEO title. This prevents the brand name from being added in most cases, which is better on those platforms. You can still set a specific sharing title on the Social tab of the Yoast SEO post settings.
• Makes the plugin icon in the editor reflect the SEO and Readability score.
• Improves keyphrase counting in Indonesian by not counting '-' as a word boundary.
• Improves the feedback text for the keyphrase in title assessment to make clear that an exact keyphrase match is necessary.
• Improves the recognition of keywords in the slug if they contain a hyphen (for example: re-duplicated, on-the-go).
• Improves the transition words analysis for Russian.
• Noindexes the xmlrpc.php file and all possible ways to request it, removing them from Googles search results.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the comment count would be output for Articles that did not accept comments. Props to gr8shivam.
• Fixes a bug where the social previews did not reflect the og:image tag correctly in situations where the first image in the content was used as a fallback.
• Fixes a bug where slashes in titles and open graph titles were removed before they were used as a replacement variable. Props to Jon Christopher.
• Fixes a bug where a get_plugins() undefined error would be thrown if there was already a plugin.php loaded via the init hook by another plugin. Props to Krishna Kant.
• Fixes a bug where there was no border on the bottom of metabox tabs without any collapsible sections.

Other:

• Removes functions, class variables and classes that were deprecated prior to version 11.5.
• Yoast SEO had many scripts that relied on many localized objects. In an effort to improve maintainability we have combined all those objects into one: wpseoScriptData. wpseoPostScraperL10n and wpseoTermScraperL10n remain available for backward compatibility. Plugins that tap into our objects will need to update their code.

Release Date: July 21st, 2020

Other:

• Reverts the change for social media titles to pick the post/page/term title, as this could inadvertently lead to low quality titles for some archives and other page types.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the where all methods were removed from xmlrpc.php due to incorrect usage of add_action as opposed to add_filter.

Release Date: July 8th, 2020

Yoast SEO 14.5 is out today! In this release, we made some changes regarding our use of XML sitemaps. We decided to disable the new WordPress core XML sitemaps in favour of our own. Also, we fixed a number of bugs. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Enhancements:

• Disables the WP Core sitemaps as introduced in WordPress 5.5.
• Adds an abstract class to easily add dynamic blocks in Yoast SEO / add-ons.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the SEO title and meta description for posts that have a custom title and/or description would not be displayed in the posts overview.
• Fixes a bug where the WordPress dashboard was slower for very large sites, by caching the number of unindexed posts, terms and post type archives.
• Fixes a bug where inline link functionality in custom blocks could be missing.

Release Date: June 23rd, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where existing links were no longer editable with Yoast SEO active.
• Fixes a bug where the editor wouldn't remember rel values set on a link after refresh.

Release Date: June 23rd, 2020

Sometimes, you have releases that start out small and end up with a substantial improvement. Yoast SEO 14.4 is one such release. Initially planned as a bug fix release, this turned into something that markedly improves the publishing workflow in WordPress. Plus, you can now mark your external links as nofollow or sponsored. You see, Yoast SEO 14.4 is a chockfull release! Read more about those changes in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where replacement variable values would break the Google Preview and output a PHP notice on the front end if they were a serialized array string.
• Fixes a bug where a property that was changed from private to public on WPSEO_Schema_Article would lead to a backward compatibility break.
• Fixes a bug where the site logo would not be output in the schema when a CDN was used for images. Props to gr8shivam
• Fixes a bug where the Facebook Debugger link was outdated. Props to eliorivero
• Fixes a bug where a lot of delete queries would be performed after clearing all indexables from the database.
• Fixes a bug where the indexables indexing warning would be visible to users with non-admin roles.

Enhancements:

• Adds SEO insights to every step of the publishing flow:
  • Adds the readability and SEO score to the document sidebar with the possibility to quickly open the Yoast sidebar.
  • Adds the readability and SEO score to the publish checks. Gives reassurance or a call to action to further optimize the content.
  • Adds social sharing buttons to the post publish actions to enable easy sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
• Adds the possibility to add rel keywords nofollow and sponsored to individual links in the block editor for WordPress versions 5.4 and above.

Other:

• Adds headers to the main plugin file for the minimum supported WordPress version and minimum supported PHP version. WordPress will not activate the plugin anymore if incompatibilities are found. Props to spacedmonkey

Release Date: June 9th, 2020

In every release of Yoast SEO, we fix bugs and find other ways to enhance our code. For instance, were always working on quality assurance, code style and other behind the scenes work. In Yoast SEO 14.3, youll find many of these improvements plus some bugfixes. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the FAQ schema list item's position would start at 0 instead of 1.
• Fixes a bug where the filters wpseo_metadesc and wpseo_title weren't called with the right argument, which could lead to errors.
• Fixes a bug where our global CSS variables could conflict with global CSS variables of themes.

Release Date: May 26th, 2020

In today's release, weve fixed several issues with breadcrumbs. One of these bugs turned the order of breadcrumbs on its head, which is not something we like. Things should work as expected now. Weve also changed how we check if a focus keyphrase was used before. We currently run this against our indexable table, making the process more efficient. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where breadcrumbs would be saved in reversed order.
• Fixes a bug where setting Security: no advanced settings for authors to off would remove the advanced settings tab for all users.
• Fixes a bug where replacement variables would not be replaced when using the deprecated WPSEO_Frontend output without echoing it.
• Fixes a bug where our select2 styling would overwrite the select2 styling of other plugins.
• Fixes a bug where JavaScript could be executed via the error message on the Social section in the Yoast Settings. As this potentially dangerous data is not saved, abusing this was not possible.

Enhancements:

• Optimizes the query used to check if a focus keyphrase has been previously used, by running it against our indexable table.

Release Date: May 13th, 2020

Despite weeks and weeks of testing Yoast SEO 14.0, there were still some people running into issues. In Yoast SEO 14.1, were improving things to help stabilize the plugin. Read more about those changes in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the help text about Yoast Columns would be shown in the Help Tab on post overviews when there were no Yoast Columns. Additionally, the help text has been refined to only show information about columns that are actually shown. Props to glebkema.
• Fixes a bug where an empty breadcrumb would be output when a taxonomy was set to have a post type archive in its breadcrumb when that post type didn't have an archive.
• Fixes a bug where a part of the breadcrumb path was missing on search result pages.
• Fixes a bug where an error would be thrown and indexing could not be completed due to posts or terms having themselves as a parent or grandparent.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO data was unnecessarily being indexed when a non-public term or taxonomy was being saved.
• Fixes a bug where the SEO data of an object would be indexed twice during the indexing process when it was an ancestor of another object in the same REST request.
• Fixes a bug where huge log files would be generated if PHP was configured to also log the arguments in debug backtraces.
• Fixes a bug where indexing would continue even though it had already indexed all objects.
• Fixes a bug where term indexing would keep going on forever due to plugin conflicts.
• Fixes a bug where primary terms of a custom taxonomy where not being reflected in the breadcrumb.
• Fixes a bug where the URL in the schema breadcrumbs of search pages would be missing.
• Fixes a bug where the wpseo_remove_reply_to_com filter was not working.
• Fixes a bug where no metadata would be output on the frontend when the tables necessary for the indexables could not be created
• Fixes a bug where the indexing notification would be shown on the WordPress updates page when updating themes or plugins.
• Fixes a bug where the yoast index --network WP CLI command would throw an error when the database migrations for one or more subsites on a multisite environment had not been run yet.
• Fixes a bug where no or incorrect breadcrumbs where shown for 404 pages, author archives and date archives. Props to amitsidhpura.

Enhancements:

• Moves the text link counter notification from the SEO Dashboard to the WordPress' Site Health.
• Makes the "You're blocking access to robots" notification site-wide.
• Improves the copy for the "cannot fetch" response of the Ryte health check.
• Removes the notification containing the message that you should check your post type archive settings when these are possibly reset to their defaults in Yoast SEO 7.7 or 7.8.
• Reimplements the Advanced Settings tab in React.
• Improves the ordering of items in XML sitemaps to match SQL standards. Props to rafaelbernard.
• Improves the transition word assessment for Hungarian. Props to @Zsoru.
• Adds the --reindex flag to the indexables WP CLI command to remove all existing indexables and then reindex all content.
• Adds the wpseo_robots_array filter to enable the filtering of the robots array used for the robots meta tag output.
• Adds the wpseo_shutdown_indexation_limit filter to enable the filtering of the number of objects that can remain unindexed. These remaining objects will automatically be indexed without needing any user interaction as a shutdown function.
• Adds debug information to the error that is shown when Yoast SEO was unable to create the necessary database tables.
• Optimizes finding attachments by URL. This addresses a primary cause of higher server load issues occurring since 14.0.
• Adds a warning to the metabox that is shown when a user enters a focus keyphrase that contains more than 191 characters.
• Makes the copy of the indexing setting in the advanced tab consistent between all contexts (post, page, category, etc.).
• Adds the term_id for terms in the object that can be filtered with the wpseo_breadcrumb_links and wpseo_breadcrumb_single_link_info filters. Props to amitsidhpura.
• Adds a time estimation to the indexing notification based on the amount of objects that need to be indexed.
• Adds a button to the indexing notification to hide it for a week when more than 2500 objects need to be indexed.
• Improves the notification that is shown when there were problems creating the necessary database tables.

Other

• Deletes the unnecessarily created indexables of private taxonomies.

Release Date: April 30th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where robots meta values defaulted to 0 instead of null because of a bug in WPDB. This could result in incorrect values for noindex, nofollow , noarchive, noimageindex and/or nosnippet. In order to purge the wrong data, we need to truncate our tables again. This means you will have to go through the indexing process again. Were very sorry. For sites with more than 10,000 posts, we advise using the WP CLI command to do the indexation on the server.

Release Date: April 30th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where running the migrations could cause fatal errors on sites where plugins are installed remotely. Some remote plugin installers don't remove files that are removed in an update. Since our migration runner goes through all migrations on the server, this could lead to fatal errors.
• Fixes a bug where the pre_get_document_title filter could be skipped when other plugins were using this filter as well.
• Fixes a bug where an error would be thrown when the name of an indexable table had been converted to a different case.
• Fixes a bug where a taxonomy parent would not be present in the breadcrumbs even though it was set in the breadcrumbs settings.

Enhancements:

• Adds a missing index to the new indexables table. Props to @pagelypete.

Other:

• Adds the wpseo_frontend_presentation filter that can be used by third-party plugins to easily alter all our meta output with 1 single filter.

Release Date: April 29th, 2020

Because weve changed the underlying framework of our Indexables technology, weve chosen to rebuild the table. This means you will have to go through the indexing process again. Were sorry. For sites with more than 10,000 posts, we advise using the WP CLI command to do the indexation on the server.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a title contained more than 191 characters.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a focus keyphrase contained more than 191 characters.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when search engines were disallowed from indexing the site.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on WooCommerce installations when the wpseo_metadesc filter was called with only 1 argument.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when using the WPSEO_Frontend class to get the meta description.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when WPSEO_Frontend or WPSEO_Breadcrumbs was called before the init action.
• Fixes a bug where a non-object property retrieval notice would be thrown when the site's content was being indexed.
• Fixes a bug where a trailing slash would be added to canonical URLs and some rel="prev" URLs, even when the permalink structure settings didn't contain that trailing slash.
• Fixes a bug where a double breadcrumb would be shown on home pages.
• Fixes a bug where the indexation would continue indefinitely under specific circumstances.

Other:

• Removes all usages of PDO and mysqli directly and uses wpdb everywhere. This should prevent a lot of errors for database installations that have different encodings or configurations than what is generally seen.

Release Date: April 28th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when a breadcrumb title was too long.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when DB_CHARSET was not defined.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when breadcrumbs were rendered in the admin.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when the Yoast migrations table did not have a primary key.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal exception would be thrown when building an indexable failed.
• Fixes a bug where the order of the breadcrumbs was incorrect when more than 3 nested taxonomies were used.
• Fixes a bug where HTML tags would no longer be allowed in the breadcrumbs.
• Fixes a bug where no title would be shown in the Yoast indexation status modal.
• Fixes a bug where changes made through the wpseo_robots filter would not be shown in the googlebot and bingbot meta tag output.

Other:

• Yoast SEO needs to have the right to create a database index. If you have restricted the creation of database indexes on your setup, please make sure to temporarily allow Yoast SEO to create indexes before updating.

Release Date: April 28th, 2020

Today is a special day. Today, a project weve been working on for a year sees the light of day. Yoast SEO 14.0 rewrites the playbook on how a WordPress SEO plugin can work. Thanks to an approach we call indexables, we bring you a much faster experience and a new foundation that helps us get ready for an exciting future! Read more about this release in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Open Graph image would be set as Twitter image when Open Graph was disabled.
• Fixes a bug where the article:publisher meta tag would not contain the Person's Facebook account if the Knowledge Graph was set to Person.
• Fixes a bug where no title meta tag would be output when no post or page-specific title was specified.
• Fixes a bug where the date archive description from the Search Appearance settings would not be used for the og:description meta tag.
• Fixes a bug where a notice would be thrown when a field in the FAQ or HowTo block was left empty.
• Fixes a bug where the Help Scout beacon was aligned to the right on settings pages on installations with a right-to-left language.
• Fixes a bug where UTF-8 encoded urls were not always readable in the snippet preview.
• Fixes a bug where the embedding of posts on LinkedIn was broken.

Enhancements:

• Adds a notification that appears when your content hasn't been fully indexed yet.
• Adds a button to the SEO > Tools page to index all your content.
• Adds a feature toggle to disable the headless REST routes.
• No longer outputs the og:type meta tag on 404 pages.
• No longer outputs a twitter:title, twitter:image and/or twitter:description meta tag when there is already an og:title, og:image and/or og:description meta tag specified in the frontend output and theyre not specifically set to something else.
• No longer outputs an article:section and article:tag meta tag as none of the Open Graph consumers seems to use it.
• No longer outputs an og:updated_time meta tag as it was the same as article:modified_time and all Open Graph consumers seem to prefer that.
• No longer outputs an og:image:secure_url meta tag as it was the same as og:image and all Open Graph consumers seem to prefer that.
• Strips all HTML tags from text fields in the schema output.
• Adds Term hierarchy as a taxonomy snippet variable.
• Uses the Gravatar image as a fallback for author archive's og:image and twitter:image.
• Improves the way gallery images are retrieved . Props to stodorovic.
• Bing has added support for the same opt-in meta robots values as Google has, see their announcement post. We have decided to opt-in users of Yoast SEO by default to Bingbot crawling.
• No longer removes the default robots meta values.

Other:

• Deprecates the wpseo_twitter_taxonomy_image and wpseo_twitter_metatag_key filters.
• Deprecates the wp_seo_get_bc_ancestors filter. Developers should use the wpseo_breadcrumb_links filter instead to add and/or replace breadcrumbs.
• Deprecates the wpseo_opengraph and wpseo_twitter actions.
• Adds the following filters:
  • wpseo_debug_markers, which allows users to disable the debug markers.
  • wpseo_frontend_presenter_classes, which enables the filtering of presenters.
  • wpseo_frontend_presenters, which enables the filtering of presenter instances.
  • wpseo_googlebot, which enables the filtering of the googlebot meta output.
  • wpseo_og_article_publisher, which enables the filtering of the article publishers Facebook URL.
  • wpseo_og_locale, which enables the filtering of the Open Graph locale.
  • wpseo_post_indexation_limit, which enables the filtering of the amount of posts indexed during each indexing pass.
  • wpseo_post_type_archive_indexation_limit, which enables the filtering of the amount of post type archives indexed during each indexing pass.
  • wpseo_term_indexation_limit, which enables the filtering of the amount of terms indexed during each indexing pass.
  • wpseo_post_types_reset_permalinks, which enables the filtering of the post types to reset permalinks for.
  • wpseo_public_post_statuses, which enables the filtering of the list of public post statuses.
• No longer calls the third-party thematic_doctitle and woo_title filters.
• Adds the /wp-json/yoast/v1/get_head endpoint to get the our head for an URL. This endpoint takes a single parameter, url which should be the absolute URL of the page to get the head for.
• Removes the minimum and maximum size requirements when outputting og:image meta tags.

Release Date: April 14th, 2020

While were working on getting Yoast SEO 14.0 ready for the world, you can enjoy todays release of Yoast SEO 13.5. Read all about Yoast SEO 13.5 in our release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when saving a post while the type was no longer WP_Post due to filtering.
• Fixes a bug where .xsl site map files would not be cached correctly.

Other:

• Sets minimum supported WordPress version to 5.3.

Release Date: April 1st, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Replaces the use of the deprecated category_link filter by term_link. Props to Chouby

Release Date: March 31st, 2020

In Yoast SEO 9.0, we launched an innovative new way to analyze your English language text using word forms. In Yoast SEO 10.1, we added word form support for the German language. Today, were glad to announce word form support for Dutch. You can read why this is such an awesome addition in our 13.4 release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the host part of URLs could contain reserved characters, like spaces and brackets. Props to stodorovic
• Fixes a bug where form fields were validated inconsistently.

Release Date: March 17th, 2020

Our current string of releases focusing on improving our code is continuing with Yoast SEO 13.3. In this release, we have a Schema structured data addition and several improvements to how Yoast SEO handles URLs. Read on in our 13.3 release post!

Enhancements:

• Makes sure all URL fields show an unencoded URL after saving, even when the user input was encoded.
• Requires all URLs in URL input fields to begin with either / or http(s). Props to stodorovic.
• Adds a potentialAction entity to the WebPage and Article Schema pieces.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where social URLs containing international characters could not be saved. Props to stodorovic.
• Fixes a bug where encoded characters would be stripped from canonical URLs. Props to stodorovic and Shahram Rahbari.

Other:

• Changes the cURL Health Check category from recommended to critical.

Release Date: March 3rd, 2020

In Yoast SEO 13.2, youll find a number of checks moved to the WordPress Site Health tool. Site Health was introduced in WordPress 5.2 as a way to help site owners and managers get a sense of how their site is doing, technically speaking. Find out more about these changes in our 13.2 release post!

Enhancements:

• Adds the capability to view Site Health to the SEO Manager role.
• Adds a cURL minimal version check to Site Health.
• Moves the "The postname is present in your permalink"-notification from the SEO Dashboard to Site Health.
• Moves the "You are using the default WordPress tagline"-notification from the SEO Dashboard to Site Health.
• Moves the "Your site is indexable"-notification and widget from the SEO dashboard to Site Health.
• Improves the usability of the "Your site is indexable" Site Health check.
• Adds error handling for the "Your site is indexable" status request.
• Adds an ID to the FAQ sections in the Schema output.

Bugfixes:

• Removes the "Check headers"-tool from the Yoast Admin bar menu, as it is no longer available.

Release Date: February 18th, 2020

Yoast SEO 13.1 is out today! In this plugin, youll find several fixes and enhancements, mostly focused at improving our Schema.org structured data implementation. Learn more about the latest versions of Yoast SEO in our 13.1 release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the HowTo schema name was incorrectly set to the page title.
• Fixes a bug where the "force rewrite titles" option would remove the title tag in svg tags. Props to stodorovic

Enhancements:

• Sets the Schema HowTo name and Article headline to the post title with a fallback to "No title".
• Adds the inLanguage property to the schema CreativeWork pieces.
• Removes a duplicate directory from the composer autoload classmap configuration. Props to szepeviktor
• Improves the copy for the paginated comments Site Health check.

Other:

• Removes the Search Console item from the admin menu and the toolbar menu.

Release Date: February 4th, 2020

Today, were releasing Yoast SEO 13.0. This release is one in a series of releases focusing on improving our code and fixing issues most of them behind the scenes. Read more about those changes in our 13.0 release post!

Enhancements:

• Hides the Facebook settings when Open Graph is disabled.
• Adds a success state to the paginated comments Health Check. This means the paginated comments check will also be shown when the paginated comments are set up correctly.

Release Date: January 21st, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a notification would be shown that Gutenberg was outdated when the latest version of Gutenberg was already installed.

Release Date: January 21st, 2020

Today, were releasing Yoast SEO 12.9. In this release, youll find a number of bug fixes and enhancements. Among other things, youll find a renamed snippet preview with clearer settings. Find out what else is new in our 12.9 release post!

Other:

• Renames the 'Snippet preview' to 'Google preview'.
• Replaces the Google preview mode switcher toggle with radio buttons.

Release Date: January 15th, 2020

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Yoast SEO metabox would not be shown on custom post types and taxonomies when the settings of our plugin were never saved before.
• Fixes a bug where the default titles for custom post types and taxonomies were not shown in the Search Appearance settings when the settings of our plugin were never saved before.

Release Date: January 7th, 2020

Welcome to another year of helping you achieve your goals with your site! Today, its time for the first in a long line of releases planned for 2020: Yoast SEO 12.8. In this release, youll find a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements. Find out more about this release in our 12.8 release post!

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where clicking the notification center buttons would result in an incorrect icon and a misplaced focus style for the dismiss and restore buttons.
• Fixes a bug where create and update actions would be done twice on multisite environments in combination with MultilingualPress.
• Fixes a bug where an empty page title would cause the breadcrumbs schema to set a wrong url.
• Fixes a bug where author archives for authors without post would show up in the search results, even though the "Show archives for authors without posts in search results?" option was enabled.
• Fixes a bug where the styling was missing from admin error notices in WordPress 5.3.
• Fixes a bug where the results of the images alt attribute SEO assessment in the Classic Editor were incorrect when the image did not have an alt attribute but did have a title attribute.

Enhancements:

• Optimizes the options retrieval processes. Props to Alex Bouma for his testing and suggestions.
• Adds the possibility to declare an identifier when integrating with the Schema output.

Other:

• Fixes the documentation in the Schema HowTo file. Props to timvaniersel.
• Fixes the documentation in the Breadcrumbs file. Props to alfiosalanitri.
• Moves the paginated comments notice from the dashboard to WordPress' Site Health screen.

Release Date: December 12th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the metabox would be broken when a relative URL was configured as WP_CONTENT_URL. Props to FPCSJames.

Release Date: November 28th, 2019

Other:

• Removes the Black Friday banner.

Release Date: November 27th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when Yoast SEO was used in combination with another plugin or theme containing a class named Date_Helper.
• Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown when an empty string would be passed to the WPSEO_Date_Helper->format method. Props to @mpolek.

Release Date: November 21st, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the time in the article:published_time and article:modified_time meta tag output and in the datePublished and dateModified schema output was incorrect.

Release Date: May 16th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the metabox would be empty on WordPress versions below 5.0.
• Fixes a bug where the metabox would be empty when both the classic editor plugin as well as the Gutenberg plugin were installed.

Other:

• Introduces a notification that encourages updating to the latest WordPress version.

Release Date: May 6th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where an empty width and height would be outputted in the image schema when there was no retrievable width and height.
• Fixes a bug where using the $context argument in the deprecated wpseo_json_ld_output filter would result in a fatal error when using PHP 7.1 or higher.

Other

• Adds a notification to explain why users Google Search Console reports are no longer showing any entries. Read more about the reasons behind this.
• Removes the Google Search Console step from the configuration wizard.

Release Date: April 4th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Reverted a fix relating replacement variables on the block editor, which was causing a slow and unworkable editting experience.
• Fixes a bug where the license information from MyYoast is being saved aggressively, causing updates in MyYoast to take 24 hours to show up in the site.
• Fixes a bug where the rel="publisher" Google+ tag was being output on the frontend if that profile was provided in the past.
• Fixes a bug where the server could experience a high load when using external object cache.
• Fixes the bug where Yoast SEO would contact Yoast.com for license checks on specific Yoast-pages even when no Yoast addons are installed.

Release Date: April 3rd, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes the bug where Yoast SEO would contact Yoast.com for license checks even when no Yoast addons are installed.

Release Date: April 2nd, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error can occur on license requests which return an unexpected result.

Release Date: March 19th, 2019

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where network-wide settings were not saved on multisite environments.

Release Date: November 21th, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the title and meta description field's cursor would jump to the start when typing.

Release Date: October 30th, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the metabox was broken when using the classic editor plugin.
• Fixes a bug where the Chrome browser tab would crash on Windows when a French or Italian text contains sentences in passive voice, props CarloCannas.
• Fixes a bug where the Yoast SEO analysis would error if used together with the DelightfulDownloads plugin.

Release Date: October 24th, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where it was impossible to change the profile in the Search Console integration step in the configuration wizard.
• Fixes a bug where the primary taxonomy picker was not shown in Gutenberg (v4.1).

Release Date: October 23rd, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes error with using $ in wp-seo-admin-media.js. Now we use jQuery instead.

Release Date: September 20th, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where the Chrome or Opera browser tab would crash on Windows when a Polish text contains sentences in passive voice.

Release Date: September 5th, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes a bug where our JavaScript memory usage would increase indefinitely. This could result in a browser crash after a long enough period.

Release Date: September 3rd, 2018

Bugfixes:

• Fixes compatibility with Gutenberg 3.7, which removed a feature we were relying on.
• Fixes a bug where the Twitter meta-tags would not have the snippet variables replaced with their dynamic values.
• Fixes a bug where the og:url would not be set to the canonical URL if the canonical URL is explicitly set on Post types, Terms or Tags.
• Fixes a bug on the Term page when editting the slug, it would not be updated in the Snippet Preview directly.

Release Date: August 7th, 2018

Enhancements: * Improves the link to claim your website on Pinterest by directly sending you to the right location. * Adds the passive voice assessment for Dutch. * Adds a link to a relevant article about re-using keywords to the feedback of the assessment that checks if the keyword was used previously.

Bugfixes: * Adds a missing H1 heading to the Network Admin > SEO > Edit Files page. * Fixes the textarea sizes in the Search Appearance > RSS tab. * Fixes a bug where adding a company image in step 4 of the Configuration Wizard, would make the wizard crash. * Fixes a bug where PHP error notices were given when the search result doesn't have any WooCommerce products. Props to jaska120. * Improves the order in which assessments are triggered. The keyword in the title is only checked once there's a title, the keyword in the introduction is only checked once there's a text, and the keyword in the meta description is only checked once there's a meta description. * Fixes a bug that caused keywords to be incorrectly recognized within possessive forms (e.g. Natalia in Natalia's fix). * Improves the recognition of keywords with special diacritics in the URL. * Improves keyword recognition through adding Spanish inverted exclamation and question marks to the rules that determine word boundaries.

Other: * Corrects the WP_Filesystem() initialization call to support settings import for non-default FS_METHOD definitions. Props to ptbello.

Release Date: July 2nd, 2018

Bugfixes: * Disables WordPress' automatic conversion of emoji to images on every page where the snippet editor is present. This conversion is not compatible with React or content editable fields and broke the snippet editor. * Fixes text directionality for the title and description fields in the snippet editor for right-to-left languages. * Fixes a bug where the snippet title and description values were saved to the database if they did match the post-type template.

Release Date: June 29th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where the snippet variables selection is hidden behind the WordPress menu when using a right-to-left language. * Fixes styling in the snippet preview when using a right-to-left language. * Fixes a bug where the 'insert snippet variable' button placement was inconsistent. * Migrates WooCommerce Product archive settings to the Shop page, if present and not already set on the Shop page.

Release Date: June 27th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where disabling the post_format archive would result in it actually being enabled and vice versa. * Fixes an issue where all replacement variables were being displayed instead of the recommended ones.

Other: * Restores currentyear as a snippet variable.

Release Date: June 7th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where a JavaScript error was thrown on the post-edit page when certain plugins are active. * Fixes a bug where stylesheet definitions would impact form fields of metaboxes on the post-edit pages. The definitions have been contained in a Yoast-selector.

Release Date: May 30th, 2018

• Added hooks and filters to allow our new search index purge plugin to work. Youre encouraged to read this post about an attachment URL problem for more info.

Release Date: May 16th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where the auto-generating of the slug did not work as expected due to persisting of the post name too agressively.

Release Date: May 3rd, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes automatic image size detection for OpenGraph images. When an image was used that was too large, we wouldn't output the og:image tag. That is now fixed. * Fixes a bug where portrait images where not allowed for the OpenGraph image.

Release Date: May 2nd, 2018

Bugfixes: * Re-adds wpseo_opengraph_image_size filter. This will completely override any automatic size determination our code does. This filter now also applies to all ways an og:image can be determined: In the content, as a featured image or as set in our Facebook image setting. * Fixes an unintended backwards incompatible change which caused "Warning: Illegal string offset url in". * Fixes an unintended change which caused SVGs to be included in consideration for the og:image tag. SVG images are not allowed by Facebook, so these should never be used in the og:image tag.

Release Date: March 12th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where the option settings that needs to be migrated are backfilled prematurely, resulting in settings not being migrated as expected. * Fixes a bug where adding a wpseo_sitemap_entries_per_page is not being applied as expected.

Release Date: March 8th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where a fatal error occurs on a taxonomy edit page when social graphs has been disabled for either Facebook or Twitter. * Fixes a bug where the breadcrumb path were missing parent entries. * Fixes a bug where RSS before and after content settings were being cleaned too aggressively. * Fixes the problem that other plugins are depending on the options we've removed. This patch adds those options as backfills to make them available again.

Release Date: March 6th, 2018

Bugfixes: * Fixes a bug where the some settings are not properly migrated after upgrading to 7.0.