Today, we’re releasing new versions of all our plugins, including Yoast SEO 4.9. This release brings loads of bug fixes and multiple enhancements to Yoast SEO and the News, Video, Local and WooCommerce add-ons. In this post, we’ll describe what you can expect when you hit that update button. Read on if you want to know more.
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Fixing bugs and enhancing flows
Yoast SEO received the most attention this time around. In Yoast SEO 4.9, we fixed a bug that caused certain assessments to go missing after the switch to cornerstone content. There was also an instance where certain users without sufficient rights to access the configuration wizard could see the configuration wizard button. In addition to that, we also fixed a bug with an ambiguous column ID that caused an SQL error. The last one was a bug where the category URL in the sitemap was encoded twice. As of today, we only load the translations when the configuration wizard endpoint is called, instead of every time rest_api_init is called.
Removing noodp
Some time ago, DMOZ ceased to exist. And with it, the noodp tag died. This tag was necessary to block search engines from using the description for a page in DMOZ as the snippet for your page in the search results. Recently, Google announced that it would stop using the tag as a source for search snippet information. This prompted us to remove the deprecated advanced robots meta value.
More fixes for other plugins
Several other plugins also received bug fixes, like Yoast SEO News for example. In this plugin, we fixed a bug where sticky posts show up in the editors’ pick RSS feed without marking it as an editors’ pick and one where the date format was invalid in the editors’ pick RSS feed. In Yoast SEO for WooCommerce, we added a filter to set the primary category in the permalink and fallbacks for several deprecated warnings. We also fixed a bug where not all Yoast SEO columns were hidden when the columns output by Yoast were removed. As usual, you can find all the changes to the plugins in their respective changelog files.
Hit that update button!
The new releases of all the plugins are now live and waiting for you to download. So, please update as soon as possible and enjoy the latest and greatest of Yoast SEO. As always, thanks for your support and we hope this release makes your work a little more streamlined.