Focus Keywords Gone After WP 5.7.1 Update

Hi,

We aren’t aware of any issues wherein updating to WordPress 5.7.1 would remove all of the focus keyphrase data.

Can you confirm you are using the latest version of Yoast SEO for WordPress v16.1.1? If you were to edit any specific post and go to the Yoast SEO meta box, does the focus keyphrase appear as missing or there is no input?

Would it also be possible for you to provide us with a screenshot of the warning you received that your posts were missing the focus keyphrase?

Yoast SEO Plugin Version: 16.1.1

Screenshot of warning stating all 140 are missing the keyphrase: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-hsnynH8wo7gLamvVI11o2wnyHtbY8MA/view?usp=sharing

If I go into a post and look, the keyphrase shows as blank. Screenshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/178-izPzHpWmqov9M81VKnm-M17VfFpGI/view?usp=sharing

@extinctdisney Thanks for your reply.

Just to be sure, we would like to rule out any plugin or theme conflicts that may occur. The fastest way to do this is to?deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme?like?Twenty Nineteen.?

Test this on your development or staging site, if you have one. If not, we recommend using the?Health Check & Troubleshooting?plugin. This plugin allows you to run a conflict check?without affecting normal visitors to your site.

As we can imagine that you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process:?How to check for plugin conflicts.

If you do not feel comfortable to do this yourself or if this does not solve your issue, our Yoast SEO Premium plugin comes with one year of (technical) support.`

Disabling plugins didn’t change anything. On a whim I just went out to the WP All Export plugin to run an export and found that, when I create a new one, the _yoast_wpseo_focuskw
field is no longer shown.

Further, when I run an export that I ran before this trouble started, it finds that not only are all 140 keywords missing, all the titles are too. This doesn’t seem to be something that could possibly be specific to my site as, I ran a successful export and fixed up the titles and keywords the day before the WordPress update, and now everything is gone. It very much feels like something bigger than that.

Hi,

Do you have an earlier backup before the WP 5.7.1 update that you can use to restore the data?

We haven’t received any reports of any updates to the latest version of WordPress 5.7.1 causing the focus keyphrase and SEO title data in the database to be removed, so it may be an issue specific to your site. We’d need to investigate further, but are unable to do so on these public forums, so you might want to consider a Yoast SEO Premium subscription.

Otherwise, we would recommend performing a conflict check (to be able to find out the minimum/default set-up to reproduce the issue) and then logging a bug report if it can be confirmed — https://yoast.com/help/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/

Unfortunately I don’t believe I can restore a backup from before the update (I have one but I think the WP update would cause it to fail).

I attempted to use the WP All Export and then WP All Import plugins to redo all 140 keywords and titles and it doesn’t appear to have worked either. I will continue to troubleshoot.

Thank you.

Hi,

Sorry we couldn’t be of more help on this one.

We’ll keep this thread open for 7 days to see if anyone else in the community has experienced something similar or might be able to help.

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.