Yoast SEO changelog

Other​

• Removes the Black Friday banner.

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.

In Yoast SEO 12.6, we’re activating our new beacon for help documentation. This tool helps answer the questions you might have about using Yoast SEO. It’s easy to use and very friendly. Just hit that big purple question mark and search! Other improvements in Yoast SEO 12.6 includes a number of fixes and enhancements. Find out more in our 12.6 release post!

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.

These last couple of months here at Yoast SEO HQ have all been about building better things. Behind the scenes, we’re making good progress at getting our flagship plugins ready for the future. While we’re busy building the future, we also stick to our regular two-week release schedule, which means it’s time to introduce Yoast SEO 12.5. Find out more in our 12.5 release post!

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug for terms where keywords and snippet preview data would be synced across all languages in a MultilingualPress multisite environment.
• Fixes a bug where the visually hidden text in the snippet preview was misplaced.

Other​

• Deprecates the Google Search Console.

After releasing several updates to our snippet preview in previous releases, Yoast SEO 12.4 now shows an image for your post in the mobile snippet preview, just like Google would. We have several other improvements and fixes for you in store with Yoast SEO 12.4. Find out more in our 12.4 release post!

While some of our checks are independent of languages, Yoast SEO has special skills to adapt the various content analyses to different languages from around the world. In Yoast SEO 12.3, we’re taking the first steps to add another language to the list: Hungarian. In addition, this release features a number of enhancement and fixes. Read our 12.3 release post to find out more!

Yoast SEO 12.2 is a release full of the regular bug fixes and enhancements, but also a new addition to meta robots. Last week, Google announced a new way to give publishers more control over what the search engine can show in the results. This change, however, seems not driven by customer demand, but rather by law. Find out what this is all about and why we chose to automatically opt sites in for this in our 12.2 release post!

Yoast SEO 12.1 is out today! It features a couple of changes in order to match the design of Google’s search results pages, this includes those shiny new favicons. In addition to this, we added a number of new filters for our Schema implementation. See what else is new in the latest release of your favorite SEO plugin in our 12.1 release post!

Contrary to what the version number might suggest, Yoast SEO 12.0 isn’t a huge release. It’s simply the next release in our current release schedule, but after hitting 11.9 a couple of weeks ago we had no choice but to go for 12.0. That’s how it goes! But don’t worry, there’s enough interesting stuff in this release, including two new checks for the Portuguese language. Read more about Yoast SEO 12.0 in our 12.0 release post!

Are you ready for another exciting release to round up the Yoast SEO 11 cycle? Because we are! In Yoast SEO 11.9 we have improvements for security and accessibility. Read more about Yoast SEO 11.9 in our 11.9 release post!

Enhancements​

• Improves security by adding output escaping.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the image from the configuration wizard notification was missing an empty alt attribute.
• Fixes a bug where some translations would be missing in the metabox, sidebar, configuration wizard and the help center.

Release history tells us that the releases in the months of July and August are usually very quiet and not 'that notable'. Due to vacations from team members, the focus is usually on fixing bugs and cleaning up. Not for Yoast SEO 11.8! This new release gives us an enhanced metabox, bug fixes and the help of contributors from outside the company! Find out all about Yoast SEO 11.8 in our 11.8 release post!

By now you probably know the 11.x releases of Yoast SEO are all about Schema. In this release, we’ve enabled the possibility to use a subset of HTML tags in the FAQ and HowTo blocks! Find out all about Yoast SEO 11.7 in our 11.7 release post!

Enhancements​

• Allows a subset of HTML tags in FAQ answer, HowTo description and HowToStep description schema output: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>, <br>, <ol>, <ul>, <li>, <a>, <p>, <b>, <strong>, <i>, <em>, and their closing counterparts.
• Remove the noindex from feeds as this causes issues for podcasts and other feeds.
• Improves the accessibility of the horizontal tabs in the metabox by implementing an ARIA tabbed user interface.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the avatar in the knowledge graph settings would incorrectly overwrite the default user profile picture.

Yoast SEO 11.6 is out today. Of course, we did the regular round of bug fixing, but the focus of this release is two-fold: a new, much easier to use tabbed interface for the meta box and an updated HowTo structured data content block for WordPress. Find out all about Yoast SEO 11.6 in our 11.6 release post!

Yoast SEO 11.5 is out today. This release features a big change that gives you a better idea of how searchers see your snippets on mobile. Yep, we’ve overhauled the mobile snippet preview and brought it up-to-date with Google’s latest changes. And that, of course, includes that shiny favicon. Find out what Yoast SEO 11.5 is all about in our 11.5 release post!

Enhancements​

• Updates the Mobile Snippet Preview.
• Moves the primary image for a page out of the WebPage piece into its own graph piece.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes missing trailing slash for the homepage on post sitemap. Props to stodorovic.

Yoast SEO 11.4 is out today. This release features loads of structured data improvements. We’ve improved the way Yoast SEO Schema works with AMP, plus we’ve enhanced our FAQ blocks and added them to the graph. Find out what Yoast SEO 11.4 is all about in our 11.4 release post!

High-time for another release, namely Yoast SEO 11.3. This release features enhancements and bug fixes aimed at improving the way your favorite SEO plugin performs. Read more about the release in our 11.3 release post.

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.

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.

Enhancements​

• Improves how we generate the image parts for the Schema output. Read more about the ImageObject output.
• Adds filesize to whitelisted properties on $image. Props to cmmarslender.
• Optimizes the code to avoid an unnecessary DB query to remove notifications storage when it's already empty. Props to rmc47.
• Improves the breadcrumbs accessibility by adding aria-current to the active item.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the position of the buttons in the FAQ and How-To structured data blocks was compromised when running the development build of Gutenberg.
• Fixed a bug where social profile settings would be empty because it was relying on the user choosing whether the site represents a company or a person.

We've made huge changes to the schema.org markup we output, adding multiple different types of Schema. Be sure to check our posts on yoast.com about this release!

Enhancements​

• Schema changes:

• Adds Person markup for author pages.

• Adds WebPage markup for all pages.

• Adds Article markup for posts, with Person markup for the author.

• Changes the ‘Organization or Person’ section of the Knowledge graph settings to allow selecting an author that is the ‘Person’ that the website represents.

• Adds MySpace, SoundCloud, Tumblr and YouTube URL input fields to people’s profiles.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes an issue where the metabox would not display on term edit pages when running the development build of Gutenberg.

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.

Bugfixes​

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

Bugfixes​

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

Bugfixes​

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

Content analysis recalibration (beta):

• As there are already a lot of users who are participating in testing, we currently have enough input to start preparing for the release of the improved analysis.

• Removes the ability to enable beta testing for new installations.

• When the feature is disabled, the ability to re-enable it will disappear.

Content analysis recalibration (beta):

• Adds a toggle feature for subscribing to the recalibration beta under SEO -> General -> Features.

• When the recalibration feature is enabled:

• The single title assessment is added. This assessment makes sure that you don't use superfluous H1s in your text.

• Assessments changes:

• Keyphrase density: changes scoring schema to account for the length of the keyphrase and changes feedback strings so that we give feedback about the number of occurrences rather than a percentage.

• Outbound links assessment: changes the scoring schema so that red bullet instead of an orange bullet is shown when you have no outbound links.

• Image alt attributes: if there are at least 5 images, checks whether the alt tags contain the keyphrase or synoynyms in 30-70% of all images. If there are less than 5 images, 1 image with the keyphrase or synonym in the alt tag is still scored as good.

• Keyphrase in title: function words preceding the exact match keyphrase are ignored when determining the position of the keyphrase in the title.

• Keyphrase length: makes the scoring scheme less strict for languages that don't have function word support, so that for these languages keyphrases with 1-6 words are scored as green, 7-9 as orange, and more than 9 as red.

• Keyphrase in subheading: only takes H2 and H3 level subheadings into account and changes the scoring schema so that 30%-75% of these subheadings need to include the keyphrase or its synonyms. In languages without function word support, a match is only counted if all the words from the keyphrase/synonym appear in the subheading.

• Text length: on taxonomy pages, the recommended minimum text length is increased from 150 to 250 words.

• Assessment removals:

• The assessment checking the length or your URL.

• The assessment checking whether your URL contains stopwords.

Bugfixes​

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

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.

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).

Bugfixes​

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

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the cornerstone content toggle was available for attachment pages.
• Fixes a bug where the Search Console page displayed 'first detected' and 'last crawled' dates that were in the future.

Enhancements​

• Introduces the wpseo_taxonomy_content_fields filter to add additional fields to the taxonomy metabox.
• Adds a margin below select fields so there's space between taxonomy settings for breadcrumbs. Props to @emilyatmobtown

Bugfixes​

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

Bugfixes​

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

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.