Pascal Birchler

Hi there

The critical error message in WordPress usually contains a link to documentation about debugging. Have you tried those steps?

In general:

1. Check your error logs to see if anything stands out. Ask your hosting provider for help if needed.
2. Temporarily disable all other plugins to see if this error still occurs

Note that recently the Gutenberg plugin had a bug that caused issues with Web Stories. Update Gutenberg to 19.3 to resolve that issue.

Our forum support focuses on using and troubleshooting issues with the Web Stories for WordPress plugin. Specific questions about traffic declines, ranking, crawling, and indexing are best answered by the experts at Google SEO and Analytics Help Communities.

Note that changes in Web Stories traffic are not unusual and can rely on many factors. For example, content featured on Google Discover regularly changes, and Google Search constantly improves its algorithms, which can affect ranking. Using the AMP validation tool and the Web Stories editor’s built-in pre-publish checklist for any newly published stories is a good practice to ensure your story is eligible to appear on Google services.

If you’re not sure whether a change in traffic is caused by a change to your site, we recommend using Search Console’s various tools to confirm that your content is properly crawled and indexed.

The archive page layout and what’s displayed on there is determined by your theme. We don’t control that.

However, you could create a custom stories archive page in the settings and then use the Web Stories block or the Query Loop to have more control over the appearance.

Just a quick update, Gutenberg 19.3 was released today that should resolve the critical error.

Unfortunately we can’t help with issues related to Discover here, our focus is the WordPress plugin, not the distribution. I recommend asking in the Google Search Central Help Community about that.

Hi there,

Are you using the Gutenberg plugin by chance? If so, that plugin contained a bug that caused this issue. It was fixed in version 19.3, which was just released today. So please update the Gutenberg plugin to resolve this.

I see that you are tracking Web Stories with the Google Analytics measurement IDs G-Y9PGYE48Z4 and G-1X1JZTTZM7. One is from Site Kit, one from the Web Stories settings.

Now those are just for Google Analytics, so it’s not related to Discover.

If no data is showing up in the Discover performance report in Search Console, consult the?Search Central Help Community?for further help.

Hi there

This appears to be a display issue with your theme, which shows both the interactive story player and the poster image on top of it, hence the “double display”.

You can remove the poster image using some custom CSS, which you could add in the Customizer under “Additional CSS”.

The following CSS should do the trick:

.post-type-archive-web-story .web-story.has-post-thumbnail .wp-post-image {
    display: none;
}

If you say everything in place, what exactly did you configure on your website?

What I see on your stories is that you configured Google Analytics in the Web Stories settings (using G-ZVKEXHYF40), so all your stories should be tracked with GA4. Is that not what you mean?

Thanks for the screenshot.

This error message appears when the Web Stories editor determines it is unable to save changes, which typically means there’s an issue with the REST API.

Does this still happen when you temporarily disable all other plugins and switch to another theme?

Are you using Cloudflare? If so, it is likely causing a conflict here. Try temporarily disabling it for REST API routes.

Hi there,

I actually see only one h1 tag on that story.

However, it is possible for the Web Stories plugin to add multiple h1 tags, depending on the layout and configuration of the story. This is not an issue though! Multiple h1 tags are fine for computers and search engines and nothing to worry about.

What is the issue with this Plugin.

Most likely it is not an issue with this plugin, but caused by something else interfering with it. This could be coming from some unexpected output by another plugin or theme, like an error message for example, which then breaks the JSON.

It would be easiest to ask your site developer for help with a technical issue like this, as they can more easily identify and address the problem. So I’d recommend that.

If you are tech savvy you can also try this:

1. Open the Web Stories editor
2. Open your browser’s developer tools (Ctrl/Cmd + I or press F12)
3. Switch to the Network tab and filter by XHR and “web-stories”, then try to save the story to trigger the issue. It should look like this: https://i.imgur.com/9C5B4l3.png
4. Click on the entry that should have been added to the list after the click. Then select “Response”. It should look like this: https://i.imgur.com/mViRq6v.png
5. Share a screenshot of what you’re seeing.

If you have AMP validation errors with your Web Stories, please share the link to affected stories or at least your website URL so we can help you.

Also note that Search Console provides detailed guidance for this kinds of issues, so it’s recommended to follow that.

Hi there,

If your question is about the performance report for Discover in Search Console, please consult https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9216516?hl=en. Consult the Search Central Help Community for further help with Search Console and Discover.

If your question is about data not showing in GA4, please double check that you have configured a measurement ID in the Web Stories plugin or in Site Kit if you use that. You can also share your Web Stories URL here if you want us to take a look from the outside.

Thank you. We can use this to try to reproduce your environment.

At first glance, I don’t see anything weird from the outside.

However, you will see in the screenshot you shared that there is an issue with your site that says “The REST API encountered an unexpected result”. That’s likely what’s causing the issue with Web Stories.

Please try temporarily disabling all plugins and switch to a different theme, then check if the issue still exists.

Please go to the “Info” tab on that page and click on “Copy site info to clipboard” and then paste the result here.