Yoast SEO (FREE) – Creating Redirects Automagically

  • Resolved 2startltd

    (@2startltd)


    5 months, 1 week ago

    Hi,

    We currently use Yoast SEO (Free) version of the plugin and have not used the premium version previously.

    I am seeing that old URL’s for pages that have either been deleted or have had the slug changed that an automatic redirect is being generated and I wanted to look into the option of disabling or stopping this.

    At first I though it was just a redirect being created by the WordPress Core Redirect Guessing process, but even after trying to override and disable this, I had no luck, I then also cross checked this in our actual redirects list managed via our hosting providers interface, yet still not the root cause.

    So I then reverted to actually seeing what was happening with the request and the “Hops” it was taking.
    this highlighted to me that it was in fact Yoast SEO causing the redirect.

    See this image: https://postimg.cc/QVwB1LFv

    So now I have actually identified the cause, I went on to see how to disable, and after all efforts and attempts to disable this, I have hit a blocker.

    I tried/checked:

    • Yoast SEO: Enable media pages = off
    • Filtering: does not work (all variations attempted):
      • add_filter(‘redirect_guess_404_permalink’, ‘__return_false’);
      • add_filter(‘do_redirect_guess_404_permalink’, ‘__return_false’);
    • Redirects: Removed ALL redirects to test, but still happening which led me to check the HOPs.

    Does anyone have any other ideas or pointers on why the FREE version of the plugin (that should not have this feature available anyhow) is in fact creating automatic redirects of deleted posts/pages and taxonomies etc. or slugs that have been changed?

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Hello @2startltd,

    Thanks for reaching out about the unwanted redirects. Is there a sample URL you can provide?

    Thread Starter 2startltd

    (@2startltd)

    Hi @maybellyne,

    Sure, here is an example URL: https://www.2start-training.com/author/will/
    When checking the headers (using: https://httpstatus.io/) I can see clearly its a Yoast redirect taking place. But my understanding is that the FREE version should not have this feature or ability at all?

    Thanks in advance for any pointers.

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Thanks for the example. I see that the Yoast SEO plugin redirects your author page to the homepage. If you’re running a one author blog, the author archive (e.g.?https://yourdomain.net/author/example/) will be exactly the same as your homepage. This is what’s called a?duplicate content problem.

    If this isn’t the case on your site, you can enable author archives in WordPress > Yoast SEO > Settings > Advanced > Author archives.

    I hope that resolves it.

    Thread Starter 2startltd

    (@2startltd)

    Hi @maybellyne,

    Thanks that was it, we do have multiple authors and this feature was disabled but we missed the little description below the option that clearly states it will do exactly as you mention.

    Enable author archives
    Disabling this will redirect the author archive to your site’s homepage.

    Thanks for the pointer, this has since resolved the issue.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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