Our base language is English, and the “Anchor text for the Homepage” in English is “Home”
We have for a long period had the problem that when Youst is running an update or settings are saved it picks the wrong language for “Home” plus the other breadcrumb prefix texts.
We have earlier thought that this could be because the Yoast settings were saved from a secondary languages, but this is not the case.
It is unfortunately very difficult to replicate the issue on a test server.
Any idea how we can make a permanent fix for this?
Thank you for reaching out to WPML Support. Sorry for the delay in responding due to the weekend.
I completely understand the issue you’re experiencing. Problems like this usually happen when the Yoast Breadcrumbs settings were saved while a different language was active as the default/current admin language.
Just to confirm, was the site using a different default language when the Breadcrumb settings were first saved?
I also noticed that Object Cache is currently active, and a good amount of data is being served from cache. Because of that, it’s also possible that the breadcrumb text you’re seeing is being served from stale cache.
Could you please try the following steps and see if they help?
- Go to WPML → String Translation
- In the search box, enter the exact breadcrumb text you are seeing
- Enable the Exact match option and click Filter
- You should find the string under a text domain like admin_texts_wpseo_***, Select that string
- Scroll down and check the source language of the string
- If the string text is in one language but the source language is set incorrectly, please change the source language so it matches the actual original language of the string
- Translate that string into English and the other site languages
- Then clear all caches from the site and browser, including the object cache
- After that, check the Yoast breadcrumbs settings again in different languages and see whether the wrong-language text is still appearing
Please give it a try and let me know how it goes. If the issue still continues, I’ll be happy to help you investigate further.
It can happen when Yoast is running an automatic SEO optimization job. I have long had the impression that cron jobs somehow are triggered from different languages.
Regarding cron job being triggered multiple times from different languages is something Sumit is already working on. He should also be working on some slow database queries, but I have not heard from him for a long time. Is he still working with WPML?
We are not using object cache. Can it be that what you see is pages served by Cloudflare?
I have send your message to Prakash and asked him about saving in wrong language.
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Peter question: I have strong doubts that Mayank was in another language than English when saving the settings, but basically, we don’t know. What do you think?
Prakash answer: I understand your concern. However, I don’t think the issue is related to the language Mayank was using when saving the settings. If we update Yoast settings and make changes from the default language, the breadcrumb language will still mismatch.
I’ve already tested this and confirmed that there’s no specific issue when saving Yoast settings in the secondary language. The mismatch happens even if the settings are saved in the default language.
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I have attached a full screen print of the strings from “admin_texts_wpseo_titles”. As you can see is a lot of them right now Turkish. Last week a lot of them was Portuguese. None of us from Denmark and India is ever working in these 2 languages, because we don’t understand those languages.
We are spending a lot of resources on fixing this again and again. It is important that you guys find a permanent solution to this.
At this point, it would be difficult to say whether the Cron job issue you mentioned is related to the breadcrumb language issue without a proper investigation. So for now, I think it would be best to keep that as a separate topic and stay focused on the breadcrumb language issue first.
If, at any point during the investigation, it looks like the issue is related to Cron jobs, we can definitely loop in the right person to investigate that part further.
Also, just to clarify — Sumit is still with us, he is simply on vacation at the moment. You should receive an update from him once he is back.
Regarding Object Cache, I can confirm that some form of object caching appears to be active on your site, but at the moment, the exact source is not fully clear. It could be coming from Cloudflare, or it may be something enabled at the hosting/server level by your hosting provider.
Since the issue is still happening, would it be possible for you to share:
- The exact steps to reproduce the issue
- Temporary access to the site, so I can investigate this more closely
I’ve enabled the private reply box for you, so you can share the access details securely there.
Please let me know once you’ve shared the details. I’ll be happy to investigate further and do my best to help get everything working properly again. Looking forward to your response.
I hope you’re doing well, and I’m sorry for the delayed reply due to the weekend.
Thank you for sharing the access details. I checked the setup and noticed that the breadcrumb texts are currently saved in Turkish, even for the English version, which is a bit unusual.
Since they are already stored in Turkish, it makes it difficult to clearly track whether they are being changed again or not. So, for investigation purposes, could you please try the following:
- Save the breadcrumb texts in English first
- Then translate them into a few other languages (for example, 4–5 languages to start with)
- Leave the Yoast settings unchanged after that
- After some time, check whether the breadcrumb texts are getting changed again automatically
This will help us better understand when and how the change is happening.
If possible, you can also share access to a staging or development site, and I can run these checks directly to identify exactly when the breadcrumb text is being modified. I’ve enabled the private box so you can securely share the access details there.
To properly fix the issue, we first need to clearly identify the root cause, which may require a bit of back-and-forth testing with the breadcrumb settings. I hope that’s okay.
Please let me know how it goes. I’ll be happy to continue helping with the investigation.
I checked internally with Sumit as well, and he confirmed that the breadcrumb issue has already been escalated to our development team. The issue was originally reported in this ticket, and it was escalated internally as soon as it was identified.
At this point, we have already identified the root cause and are currently testing a fix internally. Please rest assured that as soon as we have an update or a confirmed fix available, you will be notified directly on the original ticket where the issue was first reported.
For now, since this is a duplicate report of the same issue, please feel free to close this ticket.
As a small side note, if you have already reported an issue, please be assured that we do take it seriously and investigate it carefully. If you do not receive an update for some time, it is always best to follow up on the original ticket. Since we are currently handling multiple separate tickets related to your setup, responses and investigations may sometimes take a bit longer, but we will continue working through them and assist you with each issue along the way. I hope you can understand.
Please let me know if you have any further questions or need any clarification. I’ll be happy to help.
I had completely forgotten that the breadcrumb issue was reported on a previous ticket as it was so long ago. Sorry about that.
It is important that you guys give this much higher priority. The reason is that this is not just a “cosmetic issue”, but we can clearly see that every time it happens, it has a significant negative impact on the number of orders we receive.
Breadcrumbs and the associated Schema marker have high importance on large sites. We shall therefore not change the translation of “home” all the time, as this is confusing the google crawler and messing up our SEO.
Right now, Google has registered 2,490 URL’s with Valid breadcrumbs, However in our sitemaps we are currently submitting 57,200 URL’s
I completely understand the urgency of this issue.
Based on the latest information available in the report, the team is currently testing a fix internally. From what I can see, the root cause and a potential solution have already been identified. Right now, the focus is mainly on validating the fix properly, ensuring it resolves the issue from the root without introducing any side effects, and completing end-to-end testing before moving forward.
At the moment, I’m unfortunately unable to provide an ETA for when the fix will be available. However, as soon as we have solid confirmation regarding the fix and its availability, we’ll make sure to share the update with you as quickly as possible so you are not left blocked.
It would also be best to continue the communication on the original breadcrumb ticket where the issue was initially reported, as Sumit may be able to provide more direct updates regarding the progress. I’ll inform him from my side as well.
Rest assured, we are treating this seriously and will do our best to get it resolved as soon as possible.
