Wordpress-seo: Yoast SEO 7.0.2 Increases Time To First Byte

[mick3dx]

• [x] I've read and understood the contribution guidelines.
• [x] I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Please give us a description of what happened.

When I upgraded my website instance of Yoast SEO 7.0.1 to 7.0.2, the average time to first byte (TTFB) increased on all the website pages increased by 50 - 70% (as recorded using Google Chrome Developer tools).

Please describe what you expected to happen and why.

Not increase time to first byte.

How can we reproduce this behavior?

1. Enable a default theme (E.G. Twenty Seventeen).
2. Install Health Check plugin.
3. Enable troubleshooting mode.
4. Disable all plugins.
5. Using Yoast SEO 7.0.1 check the home page TTFB using Google Chrome developer tools, refresh several times to establish an average.
6. Using Yoast SEO 7.0.2 check the home page TTFB using Google Chrome developer tools, refresh several times to establish an average.

Steps I undertook to validate issue

1. Cloned the live website to a local environment (changed from Nginx to Apache).
2. Installed Health Check plugin.
3. Enabled troubleshooting mode.
4. Disabled all plugins.
5. Switched the theme to Twenty Seventeen.
6. Enabled only Yoast SEO 7.0.1 and performed 5 refreshes on the home page.
7. Enabled only Yoast SEO 7.0.2 and performed 5 refreshed on the home page.

TTFB statistics

Yoast SEO 7.0.1

1. 472ms
2. 466ms
3. 438ms
4. 477ms
5. 455ms

Yoast SEO 7.0.2

1. 798ms
2. 715ms
3. 746ms
4. 718ms
5. 709ms

These statistics represent a local environment with no caching. On the live website, with OPCache enabled, the difference was, on average, 280 - 420ms for 7.0.1 and 420 - 780ms for 7.0.2.

Technical Info

Live Website Details

• WordPress version: 4.9.4
• Yoast SEO version: 7.0.2
• Web server: Nginx
• PHP: 7.2.2
• MariaDB: 10.1.14
• Theme: Custom
• Caching: OPCache

Local Website Details

• WordPress version: 4.9.4
• Yoast SEO version: 7.0.2
• Web server: Apache
• PHP: 7.1.7
• MariaDB: 10.1.25
• Theme: Twenty Seventeen
• Caching: None (disabled for testing purposes)

[curtisbelt]

Does 7.0.3 address this?

[cinghaman]

The slowdown what I see in my new relic is happening due to the backward compatibility function which got added in 7.0.2

[netmasteroc3]

I'm seeing a similar degradation in performance on my WordPress installations, though I first noticed the degradation with 7.0.3.

Page load times have approximately doubled. One site use to average 20-30 ms now averages 50-70 ms, another that averaged 40-60 ms now averages over 100 ms. Disabling Yoast returns the processing times to their previous levels.

[curtisbelt]

@cinghaman Was it WPSEO_Options_Backfill::extend_wpseo? That's what I saw in our NewRelic as well. I downgraded all of our installations to 6.3.1. Sounds like I probably could have kept 7.0.1.

[cinghaman]

@CurtisBelt yes exactly: "WPSEO_Options_Backfill::extend_wpseo" Processor eater literally, we also had to revert back to 6.3.1.

[CarolineGeven]

Thank you for reporting this issue. We've tried to reproduce the issue and unfortunately cannot fully reproduce the 50% increase you are experiencing. Could anyone who has the same issue please let us know the setup of your environment? Database, active plugins, active themes, PHP version etc? (cc @CurtisBelt, @cinghaman, @netmasteroc3).

Thanks in advance, we're working on finding a fix for this.

[cinghaman]

@CarolineGeven,
PHP version 7.2, Nginx, Redis Cache, Maria DB.
Divi [theme]
Yoast, jetpack, aksmiet, social warfare pro, mediavine, disqus, bloom, Google Analytics for WordPress, EasyAzon Pro
This is what causes the load time jump WPSEO_Options_Backfill::extend_wpseo [atleast that's what shows on the new relic charts]

The issue is this setup has been like this before as well, and when we reverted to 6.3.1 [yoast] things went back to stable, it only jumps to high load time when site is on 7.0.1 and above [Yoast], so issue is not hosting or other plugins.

[jcomack]

So, if I understand correctly, @mick3dx didn't start having problems until updating from 7.0.1 to 7.0.2 and @cinghaman noticed changes when going from 6.3.1 to 7.0.1?

[cinghaman]

@jcomack we also noticed major issue from 7.0.2 and went back to 6.3.1 and now everything is working fine again, sorry wrote 7.0.1 above.

[jcomack]

Alright, thanks :) Just double checking!

[mick3dx]

@jcomack Everything works fine with 7.0.1, it was the update to 7.0.2 that caused the TTFB to spike.

[moorscode]

We've created a solution to avoid backfilling when the WPSEO_Options::get is being used.
This is the main function that is used throughout the plugin to fetch settings.

I'm creating a beta zip, which I will post here. If you could use that to verify that this is solving the problem, that would be great.

We'll be implementing that fix for the upcoming 7.1 release because our findings are positive.

[moorscode]

Beta including the fix, based upon 7.0.3

wordpress-seo-7.0.3-9170.zip

[mick3dx]

@moorscode Installed the beta version 7.0.3-9170 and the TTFB is back to within the normal range.

Thanks for resolving that one :)

[voidzone]

Immediately improved things for us too.

[netmasteroc3]

The beta fixes the issues here too.

[moorscode]

Thanks for the feedback, we'll be implementing this in the upcoming 7.1 release (which will be published next Tuesday)

[bulavenko]

high hosting cpu usage

after yoast seo update cpu usage when I click woo–products–all is above 90-95%
and loading time (by query monitor) is above 8 seconds.
also query monitor detects duplicate queries

SELECT ID
FROM wpx1_posts AS posts
LEFT JOIN wpx1_yoast_seo_meta AS yoast_meta
ON yoast_meta.object_id = posts.ID
WHERE posts.post_status = “publish”
AND posts.post_type IN ( “post”, “page”, “product” )
AND yoast_meta.internal_link_count IS NULL
LIMIT 1

27 WPSEO_Link_Query::has_unprocessed_posts()
27 calls
Plugin: wordpress-seo
27 calls
get_column_headers()
1 call
WP_List_Table->get_default_primary_column_name()
26 calls

its just 20 records (products) per page.

with a 100 products per page (woo–products-all) cpu usage is above 97% loading time about 40 seconds and over a 100 duplicate queries

SELECT ID
FROM wpx1_posts AS posts
LEFT JOIN wpx1_yoast_seo_meta AS yoast_meta
ON yoast_meta.object_id = posts.ID
WHERE posts.post_status = “publish”
AND posts.post_type IN ( “post”, “page”, “product” )
AND yoast_meta.internal_link_count IS NULL
LIMIT 1
107 WPSEO_Link_Query::has_unprocessed_posts()
107 calls
Plugin: wordpress-seo
107 calls
get_column_headers()
1 call
WP_List_Table->get_default_primary_column_name()
106 calls

with the deactivated yoast seo plugin is just below 25-30% and 2 seconds.

wordpress 4.9.4
yoast seo 7.0.3

woocommerce 3.3.3
products 1500

jetpack
cloudflare
wp super cache
metaslider
wc checkout field editor
wc pdf invoices
wc products per page
wc table rate shipping
newsletter
query monitor

/////////

looks like yoast seo 7.0.1-9170-beta doesn’t works for me.
loading time decrease to 3-4 seconds against 8 seconds but cpu usage still 60-95%.

[CarolineGeven]

@bulavenko Thanks for reporting this issue. The issue you are experiencing is not the same as the original issue described here. I've created a new issue which you can find here: #9247

[violetlynx]

Hi,
@devnihil suggested that I post here so I'll repost what I've said on wordpress.org forum.

I’ve tested the 7.1 version. The CPU usage seems to be resolved (same with and without plugin), but the loading time of the page with full product list is still worse than without plugin. I am not sure if earlier versions (before 7) of plugin caused slow down as I haven't noticed it before (so can just assume it worked pretty fast), but with 7.1 it has improved in comparison to the 7.0.3, but it is still almost twice as bad in comparison to performance without the plugin and it is very noticeable.

Without plugin the loading time of my products is 10.5 sec on average (5 attempts, all 10-11 sec). 157 products, almost all variable – not sure is the latter matters.

With the previous version of the plugin (7.0.3) it was totally horrible, 48 sec on average (and initially, maybe with 7.0.2, it could load for minutes).

With the 7.1 it is now 18.4 (5 attempts, from 17 to 20 sec). So almost twice as slow than without it.

Live Website Details

WordPress version: 4.9.4
Yoast SEO version: tested with 7.1, but it is disabled at the moment
Web server: not sure, can't find the info
PHP: 5.6 (APCu accelerator)
Theme: Custom based on Storefront (version 2.2.8)
Caching: none

[timocouckuyt]

TTFB is still up seconds with Yoast SEO 7.1 active. Disabling the plugin resolves the issue completely and reduces page load time with several seconds. Running on a local Windows machine with PHP 7.1.