Interference between Yoast SEO and Link Checker

  • Resolved mostlyfoodgw

    (@mostlyfoodgw)


    1 day, 19 hours ago

    I just enabled Yoast’s (v. 28.6) XML Sitemap, then clicked the ‘view sitemap’ button. I got a ‘404 page not found’, presumably because it takes some time (hours?) to generate, but then I saw that some external (valid) links on posts showed strikethrough text, as if they were broken. I then disabled Yoast’s sitemap and after some minutes the strikethrough went away. The second time I tested this, the strikethrough wouldn’t go away, and I had to go to Link Checker (v. 2.4.14.1), Local, and uncheck the ‘Apply custom formatting to broken links’ tweak.

    1. Which (if any) plugin is at fault?
    2. If I enable the Yoast XML sitemap again, what other clashes should I look for?

    NOTE: My site’s page given in the link above is working fine now, I’ve included it for reference. Only the link ‘Learn more about…’ near the bottom was affected.

    Also posted at Link Checker. (Edit: There doesn’t seem to be a support forum for Link Checker.)

    Thanks.

    • This topic was modified 1 day, 19 hours ago by mostlyfoodgw.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

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  • shafibeyondthecart

    (@shafibeyondthecart)

    1 day, 2 hours ago

    That’s an interesting plugin interaction. One thing I’d check is whether Link Checker is marking the link as broken because of its own validation results, rather than the link actually returning an error. You could inspect the link’s status in Link Checker and test the same URL independently. If the sitemap issue and the formatting issue happen separately, that would help narrow down whether there’s a genuine conflict or two unrelated problems. Did you get the same result with caching temporarily disabled?

    Thread Starter mostlyfoodgw

    (@mostlyfoodgw)

    21 hours, 44 minutes ago

    Thank you both for constructive help. Of course, as you suggest, I found that the Broken Link Checker issue has nothing at all to do with Yoast sitemap.

    With Yoast sitemap off and permalinks refreshed, the original WP sitemap reappeared. When I toggled Yoast sitemap on I reloaded (F5) that sitemap page and it showed the new sitemap, BUT none of the sub-maps worked – all gave a 404 error. When I clicked on the ‘view sitemap’ button within the Yoast plugin I got a 404 error, no matter what I did with refreshing permalinks, and clearing the WP cache. (I know nothing of a “server-level cache”.)

    Conclusion: Yoast sitemap implementation is not intuitive to a non-tech – I will not be using it.
    I only went to Yoast because I believed that the WP sitemap was not up to date, and wanted a refresh. In fact closer inspection shows the WP sitemap IS up to date.

    The apparent issue with Broken Link Checker is coincidental – I happened to notice the (wrongly tagged) broken link to tesco.com on a new post, at the same time as my sitemap investigation, and the on/off behaviour of the strikethrough text possibly relates to a caching mix-up (?). I’ve unchecked the custom formatting tweak. I don’t know how BLC performs its test of the link, but it seems very sensitive to slow sites, and randomly reports 403 Forbidden to some run-of-the-mill sites. No big deal.

    Thanks again. Resolved.

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