Enhancements

Adds a filter to disable the Table of Content block to prevent auto generation of html anchors for headings.

Adds optional blocking of the Google-Extended, ChatGPT and CCBot user-agents.

Improves the word compexity assessment for English by expanding the list of frequently used words.

Other

Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 21.5.

Sets the WordPress tested up to version to 6.4.

Enhancements

Get ready to supercharge your content! AI-powered meta description and title generation is now seamlessly enabled for all users as the default setting.

Introducing a new feature: AI SEO title and meta description generation for WooCommerce products! To unlock this SEO magic, make sure you have both Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast WooCommerce SEO installed.

Bugfixes

Fixes a bug where the focus style of the Use AI error message buttons would be cut off.

Fixes a bug where the related links block would not be translated.

Other

Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 21.6.

Enhancements

Removes a superfluous warning in the first time configuration when the site environment is non-production.

Bugfixes

Fixes a bug where an additional Organization, Person schema piece would be wrongly generated for author pages when a website representing an organization was set to represent a person different from the author.

Fixes a bug where the initial state for the website name would be empty when saving the site representation step in the first time configuration.

Fixes a bug where modifications to the analysis data would not be included in the Insights analysis.

Fixes a bug where the “view” button for tracking SEO performance would have the wrong size when editing a post in Elementor and Classic editor.

Other

Adds checks to ensure that the plugin has no known incompatibilities with PHP 8.3.

Improves the discoverability of the security policy.

Improves the instructions in the first-time configuration so that they’re easier to follow.

Improves the new installation screen layout and design.

Provides a filter to add a list of shortcodes so they can be parsed and then included in our content analysis in Classic editor.

Enhancements

Now available: highlighting for results of the SEO, readability, and inclusive language analyses in Elementor.

Makes the AI Generator tip toaster visible until explicitly closed by the user.

Bugfixes

Fixes a bug where exporting the keyphrase scores would result in a fatal error when additional keyphrases were stored in the database in a malformed way.

Fixes a bug where highlighting would be applied incorrectly when keyphrase occurrences contained different types of apostrophes than ‘ in the keyphrase distribution assessment.

Fixes a bug where the schema for a variable price product created with Easy Digital Downloads would be invalid.

Fixes a bug where the Yoast Table of Contents block would prevent editing a post when using the latest version of Gutenberg (17.3.0).

Other

Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 21.8.

Bug fixes
Fixes a bug where Accordion and Tabs widgets in Elementor would not open a tab when clicking its header in the preview.
Fixes a bug where calling a deprecated function would lead to a fatal error.
Fixes a bug where the content analysis would not work properly when a related links block had been added.
Other
Adds a filter to suppress the notification shown in the block editor when a redirect is automatically created upon slug change.
Bumps the minimum required version of Yoast SEO to 21.9.
Make the required PHP extensions explicit.
Removes Yoast SEO from the Premium zip which reduces the zip size. Also automatically installs Yoast SEO from the WordPress.org repository if it’s not present.
Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 6.3.

Enhancements

Converts the Yoast How-to and FAQ blocks to use the Blocks V3 API.

Introduces a date and a separator snippet variable to the meta description text field, to make clear that both the date and a separator are automatically added to the character count of the meta description. Hovering over the variables reveals a tooltip with more explanation.

Bugfixes

Fixes a bug where a PHP deprecation error would be thrown when trying to convert a relative URL to an absolute one, with the provided value being null.

Fixes a bug where the character count of the meta description field would not include the automatically added date and separator when no additional content was provided.

Fixes a bug where the elements in the Yoast sidebar and metabox are displayed in an incorrect order if Yoast SEO Premium is activated.

Other

Deprecates \Yoast\WP\SEO\Integrations\Blocks\Structured_Data_Blocks::enqueue_block_editor_assets().

Properly escapes tags in the Enhanced Slack Sharing presenter to prevent incorrect rendering and unwanted, potentially malicious behavior. Props to @rob006.

Removes the yoast-components-package script.

Sets the minimum supported WordPress version to 6.4.