v1.3.0 - 2026-09-03
🟠* Fix - Your sitemap files were returning "404 Not Found" to Google while showing correct XML in a browser. WordPress runs an ordinary blog-posts query on a sitemap request and marks the response 404 when that unrelated query comes back empty, then prints the sitemap anyway - so the file looks perfect to you and doesn't exist as far as a crawler is concerned. Any site with a thin blog was affected on page 2 and beyond (a site with 10 published posts got one page, the rest 404), and since WordPress 7.1 a site with no published posts at all got 404 on every file including the index. On our own demo Google had read 2 of 41 sitemap files, and since August none. The plugin now keeps sitemap requests out of that check, so real files answer 200 and the ones that should not exist still 404
🟢 * Add - Settings > SEO, a new section with two rules for pages that have nothing to say. Both mean "noindex, follow" plus removal from the sitemap: search engines stop indexing the page, visitors still see it, links still work and link equity still flows. Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden from your site
🟢 * Add - Player pages with no statistics are hidden from search engines, on by default. A player who has never appeared in an imported game has a page with nothing on it but a name, and a few thousand of those read to Google as mass-generated filler that can hold back the rest of the site. After updating you get a one-time notice with the count on your site and a link to the setting, plus a "No stats" filter in the Players list so you can see exactly which players it covers. Turn it off in Settings > SEO
🟢 * Add - Excluded Leagues, for a competition you import for completeness but don't want ranking - a lower division, or a college league with thousands of squad players. Pick a league and tick which of its pages to keep out of search: players, games, teams, seasons, in any combination. Players are ticked by default because they are usually the reason to exclude a league
🟠* Fix - Every game description shipped a broken conditional tag. Basketball and baseball finished and upcoming layouts use a date placeholder that was never registered, so instead of a date the description read "recap[IFFebruary 19, 2024], February 19, 2024[ENDIFFebruary 19, 2024]" - on every game page, on every site, since March. American Football finished games had a similar problem with a placeholder that isn't a game variable and printed as literal "%date%"
🟠* Fix - Season names in titles and descriptions no longer repeat the league. The provider's season names already include it, so "%league_name% %season_name%" produced "MLB MLB 2026", "NFL NFL 26/27" and "NBA All Star Game NBA All Star Game 2024". The league name is now dropped from the season half when it's already there, which leaves every layout you have written working as it is
🟠* Fix - Sitemap dates were telling search engines that every page on your site changed on each sync. The last-modified date came from the sync timestamp, which moves whether or not anything about the page changed. Finished games now use their own kickoff time, which stops changing when the game does; player pages carry no date at all rather than a date that isn't true. A last-modified date crawlers learn to distrust is worse than none
🟠* Fix - Sitemaps could list the same URL on two pages and drop others entirely. The ordering wasn't unique on a multi-sport site, so the database was free to break ties differently on each page request. Both the URL list and the page count now come from the same rule, so the count always matches what the pages actually contain
🟠* Fix - The WordPress users sitemap is no longer offered. It exposes the author archive, which on a Hub site lists the same entity pages the entity sitemaps already carry, under a URL nothing links to
🟠* Fix - On sites running Yoast or Rank Math, the pages hidden from search were still listed in the sitemap. Both plugins switch off the WordPress sitemap and serve their own, and theirs included every entity page whether or not the SEO rules covered it - so on the same site a stat-less player page asked search engines not to index it while the sitemap advertised it for indexing. Their sitemaps now follow the same rules as the WordPress one, checked against both plugins on 9,000 pages. SEO SIMPLE PACK was never affected, because it leaves the WordPress sitemap in place. Saving a setting in Settings > SEO also clears Rank Math's cached sitemap files, so the change shows up on the next request instead of whenever the cache happened to expire
🟠* Fix - Deleting an American Football season left every player and team statistics row behind. The season, its games and their pages went; the statistics rows stayed, pointing at a season that no longer existed. Nothing rendered them and nothing reported them, so the only sign was a row count that never went down. Basketball and baseball were not affected
🟠* Fix - Head-to-head records on game pages counted a tied game as a win. Baseball and American football games that finish level carry their own result code, which the record didn't handle, so every tie went to whichever team was away. Basketball has no ties and is unaffected
🟢 * Add - Settings > SEO, a new section with two rules for pages that have nothing to say. Both mean "noindex, follow" plus removal from the sitemap: search engines stop indexing the page, visitors still see it, links still work and link equity still flows. Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden from your site
🟢 * Add - Player pages with no statistics are hidden from search engines, on by default. A player who has never appeared in an imported game has a page with nothing on it but a name, and a few thousand of those read to Google as mass-generated filler that can hold back the rest of the site. After updating you get a one-time notice with the count on your site and a link to the setting, plus a "No stats" filter in the Players list so you can see exactly which players it covers. Turn it off in Settings > SEO
🟢 * Add - Excluded Leagues, for a competition you import for completeness but don't want ranking - a lower division, or a college league with thousands of squad players. Pick a league and tick which of its pages to keep out of search: players, games, teams, seasons, in any combination. Players are ticked by default because they are usually the reason to exclude a league
🟠* Fix - Every game description shipped a broken conditional tag. Basketball and baseball finished and upcoming layouts use a date placeholder that was never registered, so instead of a date the description read "recap[IFFebruary 19, 2024], February 19, 2024[ENDIFFebruary 19, 2024]" - on every game page, on every site, since March. American Football finished games had a similar problem with a placeholder that isn't a game variable and printed as literal "%date%"
🟠* Fix - Season names in titles and descriptions no longer repeat the league. The provider's season names already include it, so "%league_name% %season_name%" produced "MLB MLB 2026", "NFL NFL 26/27" and "NBA All Star Game NBA All Star Game 2024". The league name is now dropped from the season half when it's already there, which leaves every layout you have written working as it is
🟠* Fix - Sitemap dates were telling search engines that every page on your site changed on each sync. The last-modified date came from the sync timestamp, which moves whether or not anything about the page changed. Finished games now use their own kickoff time, which stops changing when the game does; player pages carry no date at all rather than a date that isn't true. A last-modified date crawlers learn to distrust is worse than none
🟠* Fix - Sitemaps could list the same URL on two pages and drop others entirely. The ordering wasn't unique on a multi-sport site, so the database was free to break ties differently on each page request. Both the URL list and the page count now come from the same rule, so the count always matches what the pages actually contain
🟠* Fix - The WordPress users sitemap is no longer offered. It exposes the author archive, which on a Hub site lists the same entity pages the entity sitemaps already carry, under a URL nothing links to
🟠* Fix - On sites running Yoast or Rank Math, the pages hidden from search were still listed in the sitemap. Both plugins switch off the WordPress sitemap and serve their own, and theirs included every entity page whether or not the SEO rules covered it - so on the same site a stat-less player page asked search engines not to index it while the sitemap advertised it for indexing. Their sitemaps now follow the same rules as the WordPress one, checked against both plugins on 9,000 pages. SEO SIMPLE PACK was never affected, because it leaves the WordPress sitemap in place. Saving a setting in Settings > SEO also clears Rank Math's cached sitemap files, so the change shows up on the next request instead of whenever the cache happened to expire
🟠* Fix - Deleting an American Football season left every player and team statistics row behind. The season, its games and their pages went; the statistics rows stayed, pointing at a season that no longer existed. Nothing rendered them and nothing reported them, so the only sign was a row count that never went down. Basketball and baseball were not affected
🟠* Fix - Head-to-head records on game pages counted a tied game as a win. Baseball and American football games that finish level carry their own result code, which the record didn't handle, so every tie went to whichever team was away. Basketball has no ties and is unaffected
Customer support service by UserEcho