AIOSEO Doesn’t Ping Google

Resolved OurDigiTech
(@ourdigitech)

3 years, 5 months ago
Hi.

I’m using AIOSEO from my site’s early days. However, I have two problems with it. First one is more important than other one.

Whenever I post an article, ideally AIOSEO should ping Google for updated sitemap. It doesn’t. For days Google doesn’t know that my sitemap is updated. As my site is news related site where updating of sitemap on Google quickly is very important, pinging Google is an extremely important feature for me and AIOSEO doesn’t do that. Whenever I search my article url in Google search console. It shows that Google still doesn’t know about it. I have to always manually ping Google with this link for Google to know about it:
```
https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=https://ourdigitech.com/sitemap.xml
```
It’s only when I use the above link manually that Google Search console identifies my article and then later indexes it. Ideally AIOSEO should ping Google by itself but it’s not doing so.

These days, I’m using another plugin for Google Publisher Center. That plugin manages to ping Google Search Console absolutely fine. Yet AIOSEO is not able to do so. It’s important to mention that my problem with AIOSEO not pinging is from start, not from the time I started using another additional plugin. Either way I don’t want to rely on that plugin. I want AIOSEO to alert Google Search Console. It’s really important for me.

I checked the AIOSEO’s plugin files and AIOSEO does have two files for ping. Suggesting that it is ideally designed for pinging. But it’s not working.

Also I’m not talking about IndexNow thing which is mostly about Bing. I’m talking about Google Search Console here which is not related to IndexNow.

AIOSEO’s changelog of few years ago reveals that pinging sitemap support was added to it.
```
Enhancements to code that automatically pings Google/Bing with XML Sitemap updates.
```
Then why it’s not working.

All other plugins like Yoast and Rank Math openly announce support for pinging. Then why is AIOSEO is running away from it.

Here’s Yoast:

By default, Yoast SEO pings Google and Bing when you publish a new post with the URL of your XML sitemap. By doing this, the search engine can easily find the new URL and index it.

Here’s Rank Math:

Pinging is a process by which Rank Math can notify Google that your sitemap has been updated. This setting helps you enable or disable the pinging feature. We recommend that you enable this feature.

Hopefully I don’t come across as rude as I’m not trying to be so. But pinging Google is very important for me and if it’s not fixed then I might need to switch to another plugins which support it.

If the issue is from my side then I’m open to cooperating on it. I can also ask server admin for help. But please look into it.

Second issue I’m facing is of featured image. Inside a post, AIOSEO always recommends using an image / video in the post for better SEO. However, AIOSEO still doesn’t count featured image into that suggestion and says no image used in the post even if featured image is added to it.

If it doesn’t take featured image into consideration at all then a question arises about the use for featured image at all. Ideally it should consider featured image as part of image / video inside an post, but it is not doing so. Please look into it.

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

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

Plugin Author arnaudbroes
(@arnaudbroes)

3 years, 5 months ago

Hey @ourdigitech,

As you saw in our code, we do ping Google when you update or publish a new post.

Our plugin schedules a cron-like task (we use a framework called Action Scheduler for this) in the background to ping Google. You can see an example of this here.

I also checked to make sure this is still working correctly, which is evidenced by this image.

So, I’m not entirely sure why that wouldn’t be working for you. Have you disabled WP Cron on your site by any chance?

It’s also good to keep in mind that when you ping your sitemap to Google, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll crawl and index your new post right away. It’s not abnormal for Google to take a few days to crawl your website, depending on how much traffic and authority you have. I’d recommend that you also submit your sitemaps in Google Search Console by the way if you haven’t done this already.

With regard to the TruSEO issue where it doesn’t consider your featured image as an image that’s embedded in your post content, that is the intended behaviour for now because it really depends on your theme/page template whether or not your featured image will be displayed on the page. This is not something that we are able to detect programatically.

There are plenty of themes that don’t include the featured image on the page itself, but only on the archive page or homepage where the post may be featured. Keep in mind that these are only suggestions, so if you know that your post’s featured image will be displayed, then you can simply ignore this check.

Let me know what your thoughts are on both these matters.

Thread Starter OurDigiTech
(@ourdigitech)

3 years, 4 months ago

Hi @arnaudbroes . Thanks for the reply.

I must say, I’m not as technically expert to know cron jobs in details. Having said, I installed two different plugins. This and this. To check if there are any cronjob events on my site for AIOSEO and after repeated searches, I cannot find any instances of it.

Now, if you are using some other methods that the likes of Jetpack and Google Sitekit aren’t, making the AIOSEO’s cronjobs not visible in the above plugins, then I am not aware.

What I can say however is that we have not disabled cron on my site. I checked the wp-config file and I found no instances of any mention of it being disabled. I’m also pretty sure that it’s not disabled at the server level either.

I also checked the ping.php file. Except the $test = line, it matches with your screenshot.

Yes I am aware about how Google Search Console behaves. Whenever I check the url of a new article, I don’t know the exact words, but it says something like url is unknown to Google.

It’s only after I ping Google manually that Google says url is discovered by the sitemap.xml. Crawling / indexing comes later. I’m mostly concerned about the url not getting discovered part.

About sitemap, I have followed all the guidelines by AIOSEO and have added it properly to Google Search Console. Though the search console behaves differently (in indexing) when I add the sitemap.rss in addition to the xml one, but that’s for another time and possibly Google’s fault.

As for featured image, I see. Can I suggest you something. How about adding an option of detecting featured image. Whether a user wants featured image to be counted as part of the article or not and effect the SEO scores. Please think about it.

Plugin Author arnaudbroes
(@arnaudbroes)

3 years, 4 months ago

Hey @ourdigitech,

I’m not sure if Action Scheduler jobs will be listed among regular cron jobs, even if they are based on cron. You can find your AIOSEO related actions by navigating to this URL – https://domain.com/wp-admin/tools.php?page=action-scheduler&status=pending&s=aioseo (obviously, replace the domain name with your site domain).

Try updating/creating a new post and then immediately navigate to that page. Do you see a scheduled aioseo_sitemap_ping action there?

Let me know if you do or do not and then we can continue troubleshooting it from there.

Plugin Support Steve M
(@wpsmort)

3 years, 4 months ago

Hi @ourdigitech,

We haven’t heard back from you in a couple of days. I’m going to go ahead and close this thread for now. But if you’d like us to assist, please feel welcome to continue the conversation.

Thanks!
Thread Starter OurDigiTech
(@ourdigitech)

3 years, 4 months ago
Hi @arnaudbroes .

Sorry for delayed reply. Somehow that link wasn’t working for me earlier. However I re-tried it and now it works. Possibly user error.

I followed the url and updated a post, you are correct. The ping actions do exist on that page. It seems the action was executed too.

However, Google hasn’t updated the sitemap page at all. I guarantee you. If I had posted an article, Google wouldn’t recognize it at all. Will give “not discovered” or something like that on the url check page. It will stay like that for days.

However, after doing the above and waiting for the Google Search Console Sitemap page to change, then I pinged Google directly using this link:
```
https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=https://site.com/sitemap.xml
```
It immediately updates the sitemap page. Suggesting that AIOSEO is not able to ping Google correctly here.
Plugin Author arnaudbroes
(@arnaudbroes)

3 years, 4 months ago
Hey @ourdigitech,

In that case I suggest we log the result of the ping to your error log so that we can see if the ping is successful or not.

Can you wrap what’s on line 111 in the Ping class inside an error_log statement like this?
```
error_log(
    wp_remote_get( $endpoint . urlencode( $url 
);
```
Then, after a few pings have been completed, please examine your PHP error log to see what the result of the request is.

If you’re getting a 200 OK status code back, Google should have been pinged successfully.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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