Yoast News SEO changelog

Enhancements​

• Huge performance improvement: moves the XML News sitemap to be based on our Indexables architecture.
• Removes images from the XML News sitemap as they serve no purpose here and this further improves performance.

Other​

• Excludes attachments and non-indexed post types from the possible post types to include in the News Sitemap.

Enhancements​

• Adds Schema Article News subtypes: ReviewNewsArticle, AnalysisNewsArticle, AskPublicNewsArticle, BackgroundNewsArticle, OpinionNewsArticle, and ReportageNewsArticle.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a duplicate News section would be shown in the Yoast sidebar in the post editor when Yoast SEO Premium is active in combination with WP 5.8.

Enhancements​

• Adds key/value pairs of all News SEO meta tags to our REST API.
• Improves the performance of the news sitemap. Props to archon810.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a database query including duplicate column names would fail on certain database systems.

Other​

• Adds a filter to override the decision to omit an item from the news sitemap. Props to joneslloyd.
• Sets the minimum WordPress version to 5.6.

Enhancements​

• Adds News to the Yoast SEO sidebar in the Elementor editor and the block editor.
• Merges the Exclude from News sitemap and the Googlebot-News index settings from the News meta box into one setting: Exclude this post from Google News. Because both settings served the same purpose, to exclude your content from the News sitemap.
• Removes the Default genre setting from the News sitemap and settings because Google no longer supports Genres for articles in Google News.

Other​

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

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where certain conditions (e.g. using a different admin language) would result in an endless loop.
• Fixes "mixed content" warnings on the News SEO options page.

Enhancements​

• Adds 'Article' as @type to articles that are set to be included in the news sitemap. This results in a @type array with at least 'Article' and 'NewsArticle'.

Other​

• Enables tracking when activating the plugin. It can be disabled in the Yoast SEO configuration wizard.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 5.4.

Other​

• Sets the minimum WordPress version to 5.3.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a large number of WordPress terms or post types would cause significant slowdowns and possible crashes on admin pages.

Other​

• Removes the code tags from the term and post type names on the News SEO settings page.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the sitemap could be invalidated twice on multisite with MultilingualPress.

Other​

• Show dates in UTC+0 format everywhere.

Enhancements​

• Replaces the HelpScout Beacon 1.0 on the News SEO admin page with the Beacon 2.0.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the News sitemap would contain the SEO title instead of the post title.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required WordPress version to 5.2, the minimum PHP version to 5.6.20, and the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 12.6.1.

Enhancements​

• Shows a floating Save changes button on the Yoast SEO News admin page when the normal button is not visible in the browser window.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the copyrightHolder schema piece would not stitch on Windows because of a missing slash.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.2

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.1

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.0

Enhancements​

• This add-on now has its own tab in the Yoast SEO metabox, even if you have multiple Yoast SEO add-ons installed.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the @type in the schema output would be NewsArticle instead of Article for articles which were excluded from the news sitemap.
• Fixes a bug where news article pages and custom post types included in the news sitemap would not receive an author in their schema output.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 11.9.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.8

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.7

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.6

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.5

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.4

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.3

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.2

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.1

Enhancements​

• Schema: Adds Schema.org NewsArticle markup to all post types that you've selected as News.

Bugfixes​

• Fixed Sitemap image URLs to use href instead of guid to prevent relative URLs in the Sitemap. Props to ChristophKnopf

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 11.0.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 10.1.
• Removes the deprecated methods ( < 6.1 ).

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the news sitemap would show a blank page due to an internal server error.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 10.0

Enhancements​

• Changes the titles in the news sitemap to default to the SEO title, with a fallback to the post title. (props: @timnolte)

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where it was possible the 48 hour selection range for posts in the news sitemap was slightly off. (props: @timnolte)

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.7

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.6.1

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.6

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.3

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.2

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a PHP warning would be displayed when php_uname has been disabled for security reasons.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.1

Enhancements​

• Allows term based exclusion in the news sitemap for all taxonomies connected to enabled post types.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where terms with show_ui set to false would be shown in the list of terms to be excluded from the news sitemap.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 9.0

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the changelog would not show up when the plugin was updated.

Enhancements​

• Makes it possible to exclude posts with post type 'post' from the the news sitemap.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 8.4

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the XML of the news sitemap would contain an incorrect publication time when the user would use a location-based timezone.
• Fixes a bug where posts with the post type of Post would always be included in the sitemap.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 8.3

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 8.2

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 8.1

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 8.0

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.9.1

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where news posts set to no-index would still appear in the XML News Sitemap.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.9

Other​

• Removes functionality for original-source as Google has confirmed they're no longer using it.
• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.8

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.7

Enhancements​

• Removes support for standout tag.
• Removes support for editor's pick RSS.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the news image sitemap did not correctly handle protocol relative URLs.

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.4

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.4

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.3

Enhancements​

• Removes the use of meta news keywords everywhere as Google no longer supports them.
• Renews compatibility with the Plugin Dependencies plugin.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the page link was missing on the plugin settings page.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.2
• Adds warnings for deprecated functions.
• Security hardening.

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 7.1

• Requires Yoast SEO 7.0 or higher to be installed.
• Moves each sitemap class to its own file instead of having multiple classes in one single file.

• Load the XSL stylesheet from a static file when home and site URL are the same.
• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 6.3