When you un-deploy an OTTO recommendation, a known bug can blank your SEO plugin's meta title and description fields. A simple three-step workaround fully protects your data until the fix is released.
🔍 What's Happening
When you un-deploy an OTTO recommendation on a WordPress site, OTTO should clear only its own internal fields and leave your SEO plugin values untouched. Due to this bug, it instead overwrites those fields with an empty string — leaving your pages with blank meta tags.
Blank meta tags harm SEO more than stale or default values. Any meta title or description you manually entered in your SEO plugin before the OTTO deployment is permanently lost by the un-deploy.
Who is affected: WordPress sites using OTTO with RankMath, Yoast SEO, or AIOSEO where at least one OTTO recommendation has been un-deployed.
Scope: This issue only affects un-deploy. If meta fields blank during deploy, contact support — that is a separate issue.
🛠️ Temporary Workaround (until WP-373 ships)
Follow these steps each time you un-deploy an OTTO recommendation to protect your SEO data:
- Record your current values. Before un-deploying, open your SEO plugin (RankMath, Yoast, or AIOSEO) and copy or screenshot the meta title and meta description for every affected page.
- Un-deploy in OTTO. Proceed with the un-deploy as normal inside Search Atlas.
- Re-enter your values immediately. Return to your SEO plugin and paste the title and description you recorded in step 1. Your fields are now fully restored.
Already un-deployed and lost your values? You will need to manually rewrite the meta title and description for each affected page in your SEO plugin. Use cached versions of your pages, previous ranking data, or your brand guidelines to reconstruct them.
Re-deploying the same recommendation: The workaround protects your SEO plugin values from being blanked on un-deploy. If you re-deploy the same recommendation afterward, your manually re-entered values will be preserved (or overwritten based on the recommendation content) — test on one page first.
📡 Engineering Status
Our engineering team has identified and resolved this bug. The fix is complete and awaits release (WP-373). Check your dashboard for updates. We will update this article as soon as the update is live.
You do not need to submit a bug report — the issue is confirmed and the fix is queued for deployment.
🐛 Related Known Issues
This is one of three persistence layer bugs being fixed together. If your SEO plugin fields aren't saving correctly during deployment, that is WP-372 or WP-410. These issues are being addressed as part of the same fix (WP-373) and will be resolved when that update ships.
📞 When to Contact Support
Reach out to the Search Atlas support team if any of the following apply:
- The workaround does not restore your SEO fields as expected after re-entering your values.
- You are seeing blank meta tags on pages where you did not un-deploy an OTTO recommendation.
- You need assistance reconstructing lost meta titles or descriptions across a large number of pages.
🎯 The fix for this issue is already built and queued for release — follow the workaround above to keep your SEO data intact, and normal behavior will be restored automatically once the update ships.