Version 2.6.24 of the Search Atlas WordPress plugin strengthens security, makes sitemap and admin screens cleaner, and fixes a range of issues affecting sitemaps, schema markup, redirects, and media. Updating gives you a safer, more reliable site with more accurate SEO output.
✨ What's New
This version includes improvements and fixes across several areas of the plugin.
🔒 Security Improvements
- MCP access tokens are now tied to the API key that created them. If you rotate your key or disconnect your site, existing tokens stop working immediately instead of staying valid for up to 24 hours.
- Repeated failed MCP API-key attempts are now counted, throttled, and locked out rather than accepted at unlimited speed.
- Schema markup editor requests now require permission to edit the post in question. Lower-privileged users can no longer read other authors' drafts, private posts, or password-protected content.
- Debug and developer tools are better protected. The shared debug credential has been removed, OTTO debug tools require administrator rights, and sensitive or destructive debug actions are restricted. Developer Tools passwords are now stored securely instead of in plain text.
- MCP data access is tighter. Raw database and option reads over MCP are disabled, and both MCP connections now run through a single authenticated, rate-limited handler.
- Privacy is improved. Telemetry is reduced to path-only information and respects your opt-out.
- The HTML editor and whitelabel recovery now require the appropriate permissions.
- Redirect destinations are now validated before use, closing an open-redirect risk.
🗺️ Sitemaps, Robots, and Indexing
- The sitemap settings screen no longer offers page-builder and internal post types in its post-type pickers.
- The sitemap taxonomy picker now lists only genuine content taxonomies. Navigation menus, link categories, and similar internal ones are hidden.
- A sitemap URL such as /sitemap2.xml with no sitemap behind it now returns a proper 404 instead of showing your home page. This stops search engines from finding endless duplicate URLs.
- Sitemap generation now reports an error if the sitemap could not be saved, instead of showing success while your site serves no sitemap.
- Several robots.txt, sitemap, and indexing problems were resolved. WordPress's "discourage search engines" setting is no longer overwritten, the virtual robots.txt is now served on your site, IndexNow accepts platform keys, existing Sitemap lines are kept when you update, and uninstalling the plugin now cleans up after itself.
🧩 Schema Markup and SEO Plugin Compatibility
- The plugin no longer adds a second Article structured data block on posts that already have one from Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO.
- Slashes, backslashes, and quotes are now preserved in Local Business and Article schema values. A name like 24/7 "Test" Plumbing is no longer output as 247 Test Plumbing.
- OTTO's category and tag SEO values are no longer copied into Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO when the matching OTTO Persistence setting is turned off.
- OTTO's structured data is no longer copied into Rank Math or Yoast when the structured data Persistence setting is turned off.
- When the plugin holds a robots value for a post, Rank Math's robots tag is suppressed so only one robots meta tag appears.
- Removing the plugin's breadcrumb from a third-party schema graph no longer interferes with Rank Math's own schema.
- The Local Business logo is no longer lost when you save settings. Your selected image is kept, so both the admin preview and the logo in your structured data stay correct.
- The Local Business Type selector now shows a neutral "Select Type" placeholder when no type has been chosen, instead of looking pre-selected.
🤖 OTTO Improvements
- OTTO crawl notifications are now held in a reliable queue with automatic retries. Large batches are no longer silently cut off, and the outcome for each URL is recorded.
- Opening an OTTO preview no longer signs administrators out of wp-admin.
- Search engine crawlers that don't include the brand name in their user agent (such as Yahoo's Slurp, Applebot, Sogou, and Exabot) are now recognized as search engines and served optimized pages instead of being throttled.
- OTTO no longer serves mismatched HTML and SEO metadata when its internal request is redirected elsewhere.
- Previewing a draft on sites using SiteGround Optimizer now shows the draft instead of the home page.
↪️ Redirects and Media
- Redirects now keep the incoming query string, including through redirect chains.
- Many redirection issues were resolved. Importers no longer fail on serialized data, typing in the search box no longer triggers a bulk delete, hit counts are more accurate, rules are applied in a consistent order, re-importing no longer creates duplicate rules, redirect loops are guarded against, and save failures are no longer hidden.
- Many media optimization issues were resolved. Original images in the replace strategy are no longer lost because only the full-size URL was updated, an author-role permission problem was closed, image srcset entries no longer point to missing files, and scheduled and browser-based batch processing no longer conflict.
- Posts synced from Content Genius now keep the page template your site actually uses, instead of being forced onto the theme's plain template and losing their layout.
🖥️ Admin Experience
- The promotional sidebar is hidden once your site is connected, giving admin pages their full width back.
- Quick Links now point to working pages. The broken SEO Academy link is gone, and Documentation and Contact Support links were added. Branded links are hidden on whitelabeled installs.
- The Compatibility page now detects Bricks Builder when it is installed as a theme rather than a plugin.
- The WordPress admin sidebar no longer drifts down the screen while you scroll on plugin pages.
- The connect status box now displays the "Website Not Registered" message correctly instead of squeezing it into a narrow column.
- The "Page Builder Detected" notice now appears only on the plugin settings screen, instead of on every plugin page.
- The SearchAtlas Dashboard page no longer shows a fatal error after an in-place upgrade when a plugin file is still being served from an old cache.
🛠️ How to Use It
- In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins and then Installed Plugins.
- Find the Search Atlas plugin and click Update Now if version 2.6.24 is available.
- After the update, review your sitemap settings, Local Business settings, and OTTO Persistence settings to confirm they match your preferences.
- If you use MCP, check that your connections still work. Tokens issued under an older key may need to be re-created after a key rotation.
📋 What to Expect
- Most changes work automatically after you update. No action is needed for the security, schema, and redirect fixes.
- The sitemap post-type and taxonomy pickers now show fewer options. Internal types that were previously listed are hidden because they are not meant for search engines.
- Any sitemap URL without a real sitemap behind it now returns a 404. This is expected and helps search engines.
- If you turn off an OTTO Persistence setting, the related SEO or structured data values are no longer copied into Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO.
- Quick Links and the sidebar may look different, especially on connected or whitelabeled sites.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be instantly connected with a member of our team.