We've released WordPress Plugin v2.5.20, introducing new SEO controls, indexing improvements, bot detection, and advanced execution settings, along with several reliability and monitoring enhancements.
Below is a breakdown of what's new and what's improved.
🆕 New Features
🔎 SEO Sidebar in Post Editor
You can now edit your:
- Meta Title
- Meta Description
- URL Slug
directly from the WordPress Post/Page Editor sidebar.
This makes on-page SEO adjustments faster and eliminates the need to switch between screens.
🤖 Bot Detection Layer for OTTO
We've added a Bot Detection & Filtering system with a statistics dashboard.
What this enables:
- View traffic from bots
- Whitelist trusted bots (e.g., Googlebot, Bingbot)
- Blacklist aggressive or unwanted bots
- Prevent OTTO from processing pages when specific bots are detected — "processing" here means OTTO will skip injecting optimizations and executing its scripts for blacklisted bots, which reduces server load and unnecessary API calls
This feature helps preserve hosting resources and improve performance, especially on high-traffic sites
Transparency note on OTTO content injection: OTTO may inject supporting SEO elements (such as keyword lists or FAQ sections) into your pages. This content is topically relevant, visible to users, and is not hidden via display:none or similar techniques — it does not constitute a black-hat SEO practice.
🌐 Bing Instant Indexing (IndexNow API)
You can now submit URLs directly to Bing using the IndexNow API.
To enable:
- Generate your IndexNow API key from Bing
- Paste it into the plugin settings
- Choose which post types to submit
- Optionally override other plugins submitting to Bing — enabling this disables IndexNow submissions from other installed SEO plugins (e.g., Yoast, Rank Math) so that only Search Atlas handles Bing submissions, preventing duplicate or conflicting pings
This ensures faster indexing for updated or newly published content
What's live in 2.5.20 vs. what's coming soon: URL submission to Bing via IndexNow is fully available in this release. However, per-URL submission status (accepted / pending / failed) is not yet visible in the plugin UI. Status visibility is actively being worked on and will surface in a future update — please set expectations accordingly when submitting URLs.
Known UI behavior — Custom URL Based Indexing: When you add URLs via Custom URL Based Indexing, the URL list may not visually refresh to show the newly added entry. If a URL appears to be missing after submission, use the search function within the list to confirm it was added successfully. A fix for the automatic list refresh is in progress.
IndexNow quotas & OTTO slot timing: IndexNow submissions count against Bing's per-domain quota, which resets on Bing's schedule (typically daily). OTTO slot availability is separate and tied to your plan; if a site is placed in deep freeze, its OTTO slot is not released immediately — slot release happens once the freeze is lifted. If you're unsure about your current credit balance, slot state, or reset timing, please contact support.
🧭 Plugin Setup Wizard
New users now benefit from a guided setup experience to configure core plugin features quickly and correctly.
⚙️ Execution Settings (Advanced)
A new advanced control panel under Advanced Settings allows users to configure:
- Maximum execution time
- Memory limits
- Log size
- API throttle controls
- Queue cleanup behavior
This is primarily intended for advanced users or enterprise environments running multiple WordPress instances.
🐞 Debug Mode (Auto-Disable & Safety Controls)
Debug Mode can now:
- Temporarily override host settings to display PHP errors
- Automatically disable after a set period (for safety)
Primarily designed for troubleshooting and support scenarios.
📊 Enhanced Error Categorization
Improved internal monitoring with categorized error tracking to make issue identification faster and more precise.
🤖 Bot Detection & Filtering (OTTO)
The Bot Detection & Filtering layer allows you to manage how OTTO interacts with bot traffic, helping reduce unnecessary API calls and improve processing efficiency.
You can access it from:
Search Atlas → Plugin → Settings → Bot Detection & Filtering
🧠 Disable OTTO for Bot Traffic
Disable OTTO for Bot Traffic stops OTTO from processing requests when blacklisted or unwanted bots are detected, conserving server resources and avoiding unnecessary API calls for non-human traffic.
Known issue — Site Audit + manual (pixel) installation: For sites using the manual script (pixel) installation method, the Site Audit dashboard crawler may not correctly reflect OTTO-deployed meta titles even when JS rendering is enabled. The titles are still being deployed correctly on the live site — only the Site Audit reporting is affected. A fix is in progress; please reach out to support if dashboard data looks inconsistent for a pixel-installed site.