We have contacted Yoast Seo, because when the plugin got activated, html tag noindex was added. Then they told us that wpml causes noindex (which I have a hard time to believe).
Is that something you perhaps can look into at our site?
Welcome to the WPML support forum. To help speed up the support process, could you please provide us with your debug information. That will help us understand your configuration.
I've enabled a private message for submitting this information. Please follow these initial debugging steps: https://wpml.org/faq/provide-debug-information-faster-support/
In short:
- Go to "WPML > Support > Debug Information" (link)
- Copy the Debug Information from there.
- Find the private field I activated and paste that information.
To be honest I don't think it's related to WPML but let review few points:
- In "Settings > Reading" make sure that "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is not activated.
- In "WPML > Languages > Hide Languages", make sure that your languages are not "hidden" from your frontend.
- Review Yoast SEO settings to see if you have any warning about the no-index tag
- Then make sure that you've installed our glue add-on WPML SEO which makes WPML and YOAST fully compatible.
- Last purge all your caches specially if you made changes recently.
When I activate wpml, the noindex html meta tag is showing at our page.
I have tried to:
- Disable all plugins
- Change theme
- Make sure that languages is not hidden
- Reviewed yoast settings (Yoast support forward us to you)
- We have wpml seo fully installed and enabled
Whenever we activate wpml regardless of what theme and plugins is installed, the noindex tag is showing at our page.
Could you please provide me with a temporary admin access (wp-admin and FTP) – preferably to a test site where the issue has been replicated – so I can further investigate.
I will activate a private field for your next answer where you can provide that information safely (this field is only visible by you and the support team). Don't share your own admin account, create a new one that you will delete when we finish troubleshooting.
IMPORTANT: Before we proceed, please backup your site and database.
I would additionally need your permission to de-activate and re-activate Plugins and Themes, and to change configurations on the site. This is also a reason why the backup is really important.
Yesterday I wasn't able to find the root cause. I can see that you have a custom theme with a lot of custom plugins. Some functions are even related to language attributes (see screenshot). I simply tried to switch to Hello Elementor but it didn't solve the issue (you mentioned it already but I wanted to confirm) and looked a few plugins' code.
I'd like to take a copy of your site to run further tests on our servers.
For this, you need to temporarily install a plugin called “Duplicator” on your site. This will allow you to create a copy of your site and your content.
I have activated a private field for you where you can share those files (package + installer).
- You can exclude /wp-uploads from the copy to reduce the size.
- Once the package is ready, if the files are too large to upload them to the private field, you can share a link to Google Drive, Dropbox, WeTransfer or any other similar service.
Thanks for that. I was able to install the copy and reproduce the issue in minimal environnement on our servers. As soon as String Translation is activated, the robots meta changes to "noindex".
I have forwarded all the information and the package to our second tier support for further debugging. I'll get back to you as soon as I have some feedback.
Thanks for your response. Looking foreward to a solution.
We are quiet stressed regarding a solution for this, because noindex on a site is very bad for google, and it's damaging our rank.
I think we found a lead. I can see that some custom fields from wpseo (YOAST) that were "locked" have been unlocked (which means they have been touched), in "WPML > Settings > Custom fields Translation > Show system fields"
Also in your custom XML file there is a wildcard
<key name="wpseo_titles">
<key name="*" />
</key>
That made some YOAST options translatable like [wpseo_titles]noindex-tax-post_format or [wpseo_titles]noindex-archive-wpseo.
We're still investigating but it's clear that the issue is between String Translation and Yoast SEO. It's not a compatibility issue with WPML SEO. The internal ticket has been escalated to an higher level.
So, I was right, this part added to your custom XML was making some string from Yoast SEO translatable. But deleting them in "WPML > String Translation" wasn't enough.
We had to run a custom filter and clean up all untranslated strings.
This issue should be solved now!
The topic ‘[Closed] wpml cause noindex probably’ is closed to new replies.
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