Given Up on Waiting

  • deeveearr

    (@deeveearr)


    3 years, 6 months ago

    So here we are, over ten years down the line, and I’ve had to change my SEO plugin, NOT because of the plugin, but apparently due to the developers of the plugin.

    The reason? This goddamn awful embedded timestamp that appears on every page, regardless of whether it’ll get shown in the SERPS or not.

    Apparently, this was instigated to ‘avoid confusion’ (Yoast’s words, not mine) in that the previous system (an on-off switch) was far too confusing for their users, so the on-off swich got removed and the timestamp appeared on all pages, posts, products, whatever, which somehow makes it less confusing?

    Anyone coming to Yoast for the first time will definitely be confused, wondering who on earth added the timestamp in their snippets as they sure didn’t.

    My quote in the GitHub request, saying that ‘I’d be back in a heartbeat’ has now been rescinded, following a minimum of FOUR new versions since the timestamp was added, and this Yoast blunder will hopefully come back and kick them right in the teeth.

    Well, I just upgraded, found that nothing had been done, and deleted immediately – mind you, it means far less bloat now that I’ve finally moved on.

    Let them get on with it – I can’t think of a better advertisment for the other SEO plugins than Yoast doing the advertsing for them by blundering.

    What a pity…

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • monbauza

    (@monbauza)

    3 years, 6 months ago

    Hi @deeveearr,

    Thanks for your comment.

    We’re sorry to hear you’ve switched to another SEO plugin. We understand that you were not happy with the removal of the setting to show/hide the date in the Google Preview. Since Yoast SEO v14.7 the plugin shows the date in the snippet preview because Google might show the date on any URL, and there’s no way to control this – so it makes more sense to craft your meta descriptions whilst taking this into account. You can find more information about why we show the date in the Google preview on this help article.

    That said, as you correctly pointed out, there’s a feature request in our plugin repository to add the setting back. The appropriate team members will review it and make a decision about bringing the feature back.

    Thread Starter deeveearr

    (@deeveearr)

    3 years, 6 months ago

    Actually, you’re a bit off the mark stating that I wanted the on-off setting back, as all I asked for, as is unanimously upheld by Rank Math, SEO Press, AIOSEO etc, was the embedded timestamp removing.

    If you actually read the feature request in GitHub, you will see this quite clearly.

    Nothing about replacing it with this on-off switch, just remove the embedded timestamp.

    I asked all of the developers from the SEO plugins mentioned above, and not one said that they were planning to introduce the embedded timestamp feature, meaning that Yoast in their infinite wisdom are the only seo plugin on the market that adds things to the snippet that shouldn’t be there.

    If Google adds a date, fair enough – just go to the post and amend it.

    The ‘forced’ timestamp though is a joke, which will never catch on, and result in a loss of your customer base.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • The topic ‘Given Up on Waiting’ is closed to new replies.