‘|’ separator missing from latest update

Hello @jgolding94,

Thanks for reaching out regarding the pipe separator.

We understand that your preferred title separator has been removed in the recent update. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. Don’t worry, we’re here to help. Let’s sort it out!

Yoast is dedicated to keeping you and your site up to date with the latest SEO changes. Recently, Google has consistently replaced the pipe ( | ) and tilde ( ~ ) separators in search results. Therefore, Yoast SEO 17.1 removed these choices from our plugins and reverted the separator to the em dash ( — ). You can change the default separator with the steps here: How to change the title separator in Yoast SEO

While we strongly encourage you to select one from the list as they are trusted to work in search results, we can certainly understand that you may prefer to use these or other separators. Yoast SEO includes filters that allow you or your developer to customize many of the features in our plugin, including the separator choices. The filter wpseo_separator_options can be used to customize your choices. Typically code snippets are added to your theme’s functions.php file. If you’re not familiar with using code snippets, we’d like to refer you to the WordPress documentation on how to use a filter. An example code snippet can be found here: https://gist.github.com/amboutwe/6ed67899af7eb17fec4ece326d10c4af

Hi @maybellyne

Thanks for the incredibly quick and detailed reply.

In all honesty, I had noticed that myself, although I figured it might still have the option within Yoast SEO. I think for myself, it just looks more aesthetically pleasing, which is obviously important when designing a website.

Either way, it’s no problem. I’ll continue to use the em dash separator, given its prevalence with Google etc and I’m sure I’ll get used to it! I’m happy to mark this as resolved.

Take care ??

Actually, Yoast’s assertion that “Google consistently replaces these separators in search results” is simply not true. Just google for yourself “yoast udemy” (without quotes) and you’ll get:

SEO for Beginners by Yoast | Udemy
How to Set up the Yoast SEO Plugin | Udemy
WordPress SEO and The Yoast SEO Plugin | Udemy
etc…

If that’s not enough, google “yoast facebook”:

Yoast – Home | Facebook

So this notion they had to take the heavy-handed step to remove the very common “|” pipe separator from all use is simply wrong.

Clearly, many site owners prefer to use the “|” for aesthetic reasons, and for how it looks on our own pages and on our own sites – regardless of what Google does anyway. There is no harm to keep the option!

“|” also clearly distinguishes the title from the site name, because titles rarely include that character. You simply cannot say the same for “-“. Using a dash just confounds the title!

So, seeing as Google does still show the pipe separator, and many sites obviously prefer it, Yoast removing it in version 17.1 is simply a poor decision.

Please bring it back! Thanks.