Remember the Google update I reported in early March? One thing I left out of that story, intentionally, was some chatter that the those noticing a ranking decline around then may have had a bug with the popular Yoast plugin. I left it out because after reviewing the Black Hat World thread in detail, it appeared the general consensus from that community that the bug with the Yoast plugin was NOT related to this Google update because (a) many who were hit didn’t have the Yoast plugin and (b) those that did have the plugin didn’t strongly believe it was related. There were some that felt their hit was solely related to the plugin but based on A and B, I really felt it was unrelated.

What was the bug? Well, Joost de Valk documented it on May 30th. From what I understand, the bug in the plugin did not automatically forward attachments to their original source, which may result in confusing Google but at the same time, from how I understand Google works, Google wouldn’t just drop tons of pages in rankings overnight over a bug around a forward of attachments. This is how Joost explained it:

Joost said “because with that setting being “No” XML sitemaps was enabled for attachments. As a result of that, lots and lots of attachment URLs got into Google’s index.” But those types of issues normally can take months and months to notice in the search results, if ever.

Joost asked Google’s John Mueller about this, who responded:

Then we had an article from Search Engine Journal with the title Yoast SEO Plugin 7.0 Bug Causes Ranking Drops. The community was split on the title, many called this title clickbait and unfair because based on how Google works and John’s statement, the early March complaints was likely not related to this Yoast bug. In fact, John Mueller did a rare response on Twitter calling out the article:

He also took the time to slam some SEO blogs in general. :/

Joost from Yoast said based on their analysis around the Google issue, he believes it was minimal at best.

Here are some industry feedback on the Yoast issue as it related to Google ranking issues:

I did ask Joost for a response and he told me:

Overall, I don’t think Yoast is to blame for the big Google March update but rather the two happened around the same time. I wish Joost was faster to find the issue, but they didn’t and it is what it is.

Personally, I have never been a fan of using code that you did not write yourself or fully understand how it works because things like this can happen. If they do happen with your own code, you’d likely find out sooner and know what exactly happened. I like to control everything and a lot of that has to do with not using WordPress or third party plugins. But at the same time, not everyone has the resources for that and these plugins and platforms are really awesome. Just be careful and don’t be quick to point fingers – ultimately, you installed the software, you should know what it does if possible.

Forum discussion at Twitter and Google Webmaster Help.