On May 30, 2018, Yoast founder Joost De Valk posted on his blog an apology for a major bug in the recent Yoast 7.0 and 7.2 update. This bug will negatively affect your site ranking with Google. You need to fix it.

I know many people in Wealthy Affiliate use this Yoast SEO plugin. If you have recently updated your Yoast SEO to version 7.0-7.2, you need to read his post to learn more about the bug and how to fix it.

Here is the link to Joost De Valk apology and detailed discussion of the bug: https://yoast.com/media-attachment-urls/.

This bug related to the attachment URL. This attachment URL is created by WordPress every time you upload a picture. The attachment URL normally redirects to the post itself because the attachment URL only contain the picture with no content. The URL redirect serves as a way to improve your site SEO.

The bug in new Yoast update turns off the attachment URL redirect. As the result, it increases the number of superfluous URLs generated by the WordPress website. This increase will negatively affect your site rank as Google detecting abnormality with your website. Many websites have been affected by this bug which promoted Yoast founder to issue a step-by-step guide to fix it.

It is important that you check your Yoast SEO setting, according to Mr. Valk post, to insure the proper redirect of the attachment URL. If you do nothing, your site rank and traffic will drop substantially. If any of you notice a big drop in traffic recently, this might be the cause.

This fix is very simple, all you have to do is log into your website, go to Yoast SEO setting under Search Appearance, then click on the Media tab, the setting for the attachment URL should be “Yes,” not “No”. You should read Mr. Valk’s post for further detail. Good Luck.