Yoast WooCommerce SEO changelog

Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2 delivers the schema update we've been promising! Webshop customers will now have better control over how their product variants show online, ensuring a better overall experience for shoppers. Check out the release post for more details about the impact of Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2!

Enhancements​

• Adds ProductGroup schema to be compatible with Product variant schema.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 22.0.
• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 6.5.

Other​

• Prevents future update problems for Woo marketplace subscribers who have purchased Yoast WooCommerce SEO from Yoast.com.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where, if a product page had a previously selected page type, that page type would be added in the schema together with WebPage and ItemPage.
• Fixes a bug where Twitter fallback image would be used, even when not applicable.

Other​

• Includes various code improvements.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 22.0.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 6.3.

The last release of WooCommerce SEO received generative AI support for product titles and meta descriptions. In WooCommerce SEO 16.0, we added another great feature: easy import and export of global identifier values like GTIN8 and UPC. Check out this great timesaver! Find out more about what's new in Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.0 in our release post!

Enhancements​

• Adds support for global identifier values (GTIN8, GTIN12 / UPC, GTIN13 / EAN, GTIN14 / ITF-14, ISBN, MPN) into the Import/Export feature of the WooCommerce Product.

Other​

• Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 21.7.
• Adds checks to ensure that the plugin has no known incompatibilities with PHP 8.3.
• Improves the discoverability of the security policy.

Give your store the edge with our AI-enhanced WooCommerce SEO tools! Rapidly generate standout product titles and descriptions that capture attention and convert. This AI update -- for which you need Yoast SEO Premium -- integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, making your products irresistible to search engines and shoppers. Revamp your product SEO and watch your sales grow! Find out more about what's new in Yoast WooCommerce SEO 15.9 in our release post!

Enhancements​

• Adds an edit button to the SKU and Product identifier assessments on product pages if the Yoast SEO Premium plugin is installed (version 20.12 or higher).
• Ensures compatibility of the breadcrumbs replacement feature with WooCommerce 7.9.0 when using blockified template for single products.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the Yoast SEO metabox would not load when the short description metabox had been deactivated.

Other​

• Bumps the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 20.12.
• Sets the minimum supported WooCommerce version to 7.1.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 6.1.

Enhancements​

• Makes the SKU and product identifiers assessments available for grouped products.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where new translations would not be translated.

Other​

• Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 20.6.
• Drops compatibility with PHP 5.6, 7.0 and 7.1.
• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 6.2.

Other​

• Improves the Breadcrumb settings' link to point to a more specific section in the new Yoast settings.
• Makes product schema creation compatible with the latest Yoast Free changes
• Makes Woo SEO compatible with the indexable changes of the 20.2 release of Yoast SEO
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 20.2.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 6.0.

Enhancements​

• Improves the Schema output for Product, including a fix for a bug affecting setups where prices are inserted without taxes but displayed with taxes or viceversa.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 19.14.

Enhancements​

• Removes a box in the WooCommerce SEO page that prompts users to help with translating the plugin in their site language.

Other​

• Removes the beta badge from the word complexity assessment.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 19.12.

Enhancements​

• Adds a material property to product pages’ schema.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the Product description assessment would also appear under the Readability analysis tab when the Cornerstone content toggle would be switched on.

Other​

• Bumps the Yoast SEO minimum required version to 19.10.
• Ensures compatibility with the High Performance Order Storage feature in WooCommerce 7.1+.
• Sets the WordPress “tested up to” version to 6.1.

Enhancements​

• Adds assessments for SKU and product identifiers. Product identifiers help search engines understand your products. To remind you to fill them out, we've added assessments that check whether products (or product variants) have an identifier. We use the details to fill in the necessary product schema that search engines love.
• Improves the Schema output for offers and priceSpecification to match Google's recent changes to their guidelines.
• Adds a feature to select a custom taxonomy for products to describe their pattern in the Schema output.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the Product Schema output would trigger a "Duplicate field" warning for the color property for non-variable products.
• Fixes a bug where two prices would be shown in the Slack integration metadata when a product is on sale.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 19.7.

Other​

• Makes Yoast WooCommerce SEO compatible with the new analysis edit buttons in Yoast SEO Premium.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 5.9.
• Sets the minimum supported Yoast SEO version to 19.5.

Enhancements​

• Improves the readability analysis for English by adding a word complexity assessment for Product pages.
• Updates the Schema manipulation to follow the new best-practice for the @id of the WebPage piece introduced by Yoast SEO 19.3.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the keyphrase distribution assessments would error, or fail to mark the found keyphrases in the text, when using keyphrases that include some regular expression control characters, for example brackets.

Other​

• Edits typo in id name for product variants identifiers.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 19.3.

Enhancements​

• Adds a feature allowing users to add global identifiers (e.g., GTIN12, ISBN, etc.) to Product variations.
• Adds a feature to include global identifiers of Product variations to a Product's Schema.
• Adds variations' SKU and URL to a Product's Schema. Props to @jaredforth.
• Removes the datePublished and dateModified attributes on the ItemPage Schema markup for a Product.

Other​

• Sets tested up WordPress version to 6.0.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 19.1.

Enhancements​

• Removes XML sitemap image properties title and caption following deprecation by Google.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 18.8.

Enhancements​

• Improves the Schema on checkout pages by removing the default ReadAction we used to add there.
• Improves the Schema on product pages by replacing the default ReadAction with a BuyAction.

Other​

• Sets the minimal required version for Yoast SEO to 18.6.
• Sets the minimum required WordPress version to 5.8.
• Adds a new wpseo_schema_offer filter that can be used to change the output of the offers attribute of the product schema. Props to Dekadinious.

Enhancements​

• Adapts the Product description assessment for Japanese to use a character-based count, with a recommended length of 40-100 characters.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where an empty product identifier value could be output.

Other​

• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 18.0.
• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 5.9.
• Sets the WooCommerce tested up to version to 6.1.

Other​

• Ensure compatibility with Yoast SEO Free 17.8.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO version to 17.8.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the product identifier replacement variables %%wc_gtin8%%, %%wc_gtin12%%, %%wc_gtin13%%, %%wc_gtin14%%, %%wc_isbn%% and %%wc_mpn%% would not work in meta descriptions when retrieving posts using REST requests.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a fatal error was thrown on the frontend of product pages when using the %%wc_shortdesc%% snippet variable while running PHP 8.0.
• Fixes a bug where the %%wc_price%%, %%wc_sku%%, %%wc_shortdesc%% and %%wc_brand%% snippet variable values were not displayed on the frontend.

Enhancements​

• Adds key/value pairs of all WooCommerce SEO meta tags to our REST API.

Other​

• Sets the minimum WordPress version to 5.6.
• Sets the minimum required Yoast SEO to 16.7.
• Replaces an occurrence of the deprecated jQuery .ready syntax with more modern syntax. Props to kkmuffme.

Other​

• Makes WooCommerce SEO compatible with the latest version of Yoast SEO.
• Sets the minimum supported Yoast SEO version to 16.4.

Enhancements​

• Add the rating, number of reviews, price and availability to the Google Preview for products to match Google's search results.
• Improves the priceSpecification Schema output to prevent warnings from Google Search Console.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the Social Previews would not use Product Gallery images as a fallback for social sharing.

Other​

• Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 5.7 and minimum supported WordPress version to 5.6.
• Sets the minimum supported Yoast SEO version to 16.3.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where a deprecation notice would be shown in the PHP debug log when visiting a product page.

Enhancements​

• Makes the Schema Product type filterable.

Enhancements​

• Shows the price and availability of a product in its snippet when sharing the product on Slack.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where no plugin icon and compatibility data would be displayed on the plugins update screen.

Other​

• We've tested with WooCommerce 4.5. Everything works as expected!

Enhancements​

• Adds ‘WebPage’ as schema @type to Product pages and Checkout pages. This results in a @type array with at least 'WebPage' and 'ItemPage', or 'WebPage' and 'CheckoutPage'.

Other​

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

Enhancements​

• Hides the Yoast SEO columns in the Products overview table by default.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where no SKU would be output when the SKU field was left empty. It will now fall back to the product’s ID.

Enhancements​

• Outputs PreOrder as availability property value in the Product schema when the product is “on backorder”.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the organization schema for a primary term would error.
• Fixes a bug where a potential undefined variable notice was shown when toggling the 'prices have tax included' WooCommerce option.
• Fixes a bug where changing the product permalinks would not reset the permalinks in their respective indexables.

Enhancements​

• Omits the product:price:amount and product:price:currency og meta for variable and grouped products.
• Hides all Yoast columns in the Product overview page except the SEO Score column.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the twitter:image meta tag would not fall back on the first product gallery image when no main product image was set.
• Fixes a bug where all product gallery images would be output as og:image even though a user had set a specific image for a product.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where thumbnail product gallery images were added to the XML product sitemap instead of full size images.

Enhancements​

• Adds a Term hierarchy snippet variable.
• Unifies the OpenGraph description fallbacks as per https://developer.yoast.com/features/opengraph/functional-specification.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 14.0.
• Sets the minimum supported Yoast SEO version to 14.0.
• Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 5.3.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where PHP notices and a PHP warning were thrown for Product schema without a price.
• Fixes a bug where the priceValidUntil schema property wasn't output for products on sale with an explicitly set sale end date.

Enhancements​

• Improves the Open Graph product availability for better compatibility with Facebook and Pinterest.
• Adds the product identifiers (GTIN, ISBN etc.) to the SEO title and Meta description replacement variables.
• Adds a color attribute to the Product Schema output.

Other​

• We've tested with WooCommerce 4.0. Everything works as expected!

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the product price and tax inclusion were not accurately reflected in the Schema and Open Graph metatags.

Enhancements​

• Removes the valueAddedTaxIncluded Schema property when tax rate calculations are disabled in WooCommerce.
• Removes the 'Prices in Open Graph and Schema include tax' setting in the plugin. Whether tax is included in Open Graph and Schema now solely relies on your product page settings in WooCommerce.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the internal linking and additional keyphrase functionality are missing from the product edit page.
• Fixes a bug where the short description for the meta description and Twitter and Facebook description could still contain HTML tags and redundant spaces.

Enhancements​

• Adds explanatory copy above the input fields for GTIN, ISBN etc.
• Adds an option to display the price in Schema and OpenGraph with tax included.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where not all product attributes were available in the Brands and Manufacturer dropdowns.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where reviews weren't output in the Product schema when WooCommerce 3.8.1 was installed.

Other​

• Sets the minimum WordPress version to 5.2 and the minimum Yoast SEO version to 12.6.
• Replaces the HelpScout beacon on the WooCommerce SEO admin page.

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where hidden products would show in the XML sitemap.

Other​

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

Enhancements​

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

Other​

• Removes the colon from the form labels in the settings.
• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.2

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.1

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the primary category would not be reflected correctly in the product schema output when it was being used to set the manufacturer or brand.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 12.0

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where invalid schema would be output when a product used the placeholder image.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.9

Bugfixes​

• Fixes a bug where the Yoast SEO WooCommerce schema was output when the wpseo_json_ld_output filter was set to false.

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.8

Other​

• Compatibility with Yoast SEO 11.7