yourseo Reviews and SEO

Changelog

3.0.1

• New: hide the small “Verified by yourseo.app” link per widget. There is now a checkbox in the widget wizard (“Show the small ‘Verified by yourseo.app’ link in the widget”); leave it on if you want to help others discover the plugin, uncheck it to render a fully unbranded widget.

3.0.0

Major release: yourseo is now an all-in-one SEO suite for WordPress. Review widgets stay the core, now joined by a Rank Tracker, SEO Audit, On-Page Editor, automatic Schema/JSON-LD and a Yoast/RankMath import. Everything runs in the WordPress admin — no separate account, no API keys.

New modules since 2.7.0:

• Rank Tracker — 3 keywords per site, monthly auto-refresh, 30-day position-history chart.
• SEO Audit Lite — score 0-100 with Core Web Vitals from the Google PageSpeed API, once a month per site, no account needed.
• On-Page Editor — Yoast-style live editor for Gutenberg + Classic, with Google preview, focus-keyword analysis and an SEO traffic-light column in the Posts list.
• Schema / JSON-LD — automatic Article, WebSite, Organization, LocalBusiness, BreadcrumbList and AggregateRating, with conflict detection for Yoast / RankMath / AIOSEO / SEOPress.
• Yoast / RankMath import — keeps your existing titles, descriptions, focus keywords and canonicals when you switch.
• Widget gallery — 5 review-widget layouts (Badge, Slider, Grid, List, Sidebar), each with a Light/Dark toggle and per-layout style variants, picked from a single template gallery instead of a multi-step layout picker.

Notable improvements:

• Guided setup wizard plus a dashboard with an SEO-score snapshot.
• Complete German translation across every admin page.
• Disconnect now actually deletes the widgets it created (atomically in one DB query) — embedded shortcodes are empty after disconnect. The Disconnect dialog says so honestly.
• Google preview in the On-Page Editor now visibly distinguishes Mobile (compact card with shadow) from Desktop (wide flat card), even in a narrow sidebar.

Fixed:

• Creating a Sidebar, Badge or Button widget was rejected by WordPress REST with a 400 error (“displayCount is not of type integer”) — null values are no longer sent for layouts that do not use a review count.
• The Create widget button could stay stuck on “…” with no feedback if the server was slow; it now aborts cleanly after 25 seconds and shows an error.

If you only used the review widgets in 2.x: nothing breaks. Existing shortcodes keep working. The new modules stay dormant until you open them.

2.9.10

• Improved: in dark mode the style names now reflect the dark surface (No background / Dark / Dark border / Dark shadow). The separate dark template tiles were removed (use the Light/Dark toggle instead), and the redundant “New widget” menu item is gone — you reach the wizard from the Widgets page.
• Fixed: the selected style/mode button stayed readable on hover (was turning dark text on a dark background).

2.9.9

• New: more Slider and Grid variations. Slider adds a “Summary header” (aggregate rating on top) and a “Spotlight” layout (one large centered review). Grid adds a “With header” variant and a “Masonry” wall. All combine with the Light/Dark mode and the review-count control.

2.9.8

• New: Light / Dark mode for every widget style. The style step now has a Light/Dark toggle, so each variant (white, border, shadow, stacked, excellent, company) is available in both a light and a dark version — instead of “dark” being a single separate style.

2.9.7

• New: choose how many reviews a Slider (1–10), Grid (3–9) or List shows — the count buttons now adapt per layout and the preview updates live.
• Improved: the New widget wizard, My reviews and Help pages now use the same top bar as the rest of the plugin (the old secondary header was removed).

2.9.6

• New: more widget styles in the wizard. Slider, Grid, List and Sidebar now also offer the “With border” and “With shadow” surfaces, and the Badge adds “Stacked” and “Excellent” variants while the Button adds a “Company” variant — every style with a live preview.

2.9.5

• Improved: clicking “Build” on a widget template now jumps straight to the matching style choices for that layout, instead of starting the wizard over at the layout step.

2.9.4

• Improved: the dashboard SEO score loads instantly without a flashing spinner on every page view. The last score is cached on your site (shared across all admins and devices) and shown right away; the plugin only checks our servers for a new score at most every 12 hours, instead of on every dashboard view. The audit itself is unchanged — it only runs when you click “Run audit” (once every 30 days on the free plan).

2.9.3

• Improved: the connected-business banner on the dashboard now has just two clear buttons — Connect and Disconnect — with the inactive one greyed out. The reviews refresh cooldown stays in force across disconnect and reconnect.
• Fixed: in the setup guide, the “Continue” button no longer appears on the SEO check step until you have actually run the audit — so your dashboard always starts with a real score.

2.9.2

• Fixed: the “My reviews” tab now loads your Google reviews as soon as you connect a business — you no longer need to create a widget first. Reviews appear automatically when you open the tab.

2.9.1

• Improved: streamlined onboarding. After activation the setup guide is the single starting point — connect your Google Business and run your first SEO audit — so your dashboard shows a real SEO score right away.
• Improved: the Rank Tracker now tracks desktop positions, and the Position, Change, Volume and Trend columns are centred under their headers.
• Improved: the 30-day trend column stays empty until a keyword has at least two data points, then draws a sparkline — a trend needs more than one measurement.

2.9.0

• New: Rank Tracker position-history chart. Once a keyword has two or more checks, the plugin draws its ranking trend over time above the table, with a per-keyword sparkline in the Trend column.
• New: completely redesigned plugin admin — a new dashboard with an SEO score overview, a template gallery for the review widgets, and refreshed Rank Tracker and SEO Audit pages.
• Improved: every admin screen is now fully translatable, with a complete German translation bundled.

2.8.9

• New: a guided setup wizard (connect Google → run your first SEO audit → done) and a new dashboard landing page with your SEO score snapshot and quick links to every feature.
• Fixed: the bundled German translation now loads correctly on German WordPress sites — the plugin was showing English even when the site locale was German.

2.8.8

• New: a welcome screen after activation that walks you through getting started.

2.8.7

• New: on-page SEO editor — a sidebar in the post and page editor (works with the block editor and classic page builders) for the SEO title, meta description, focus keyphrase, slug, canonical URL, social share image and noindex. It includes a live Google preview and on-page checks that score the page against your focus keyphrase.
• New: an SEO status column in the posts and pages list so you can see at a glance which content still needs work.
• New: one-click import of your existing SEO data from Yoast SEO and Rank Math — titles, descriptions, focus keyphrases, canonical URLs, social images and noindex settings. Only empty fields are filled; nothing you already have is overwritten.

2.7.0

• New: SEO Audit — a free monthly health check for your site. Click “Run audit” and the plugin runs a full SEO analysis (same engine as the free check on yourseo.app), measures Core Web Vitals via Google’s PageSpeed API and lists findings grouped by category. One audit per site every 30 days on the free plan.
• New: dedicated “SEO Audit” tab in the plugin admin with a score donut, performance tiles for LCP/FCP/CLS/TTFB/TBT, and expandable categories (Meta tags, Content & quality, Heading structure, Links, Server & performance).
• New: clear modal dialogs replace the browser confirm popups when disconnecting a business, deleting a widget or removing a rank-tracker keyword. The disconnect dialog now spells out what changes (reviews freeze for 30 days, rank-tracker history is removed, embedded widgets stay live).
• New: when you disconnect a business, your rank-tracker keywords and their history are now cleared on the server too. Embedded widgets continue to render the existing reviews snapshot.
• Improved: when you connect a Google Business, the plugin now fetches the structured business details (address, phone, website) right away — even before you create your first widget. JSON-LD rich snippets show the full PostalAddress out of the box instead of a single-string address.
• Improved: creating many widgets for the same business no longer triggers extra Google Places API calls — the snapshot is cached for 30 days per site & business. Reconnecting the same business within that window does not refresh reviews either (use the dedicated refresh button or wait for the cooldown).
• Privacy: added the SEO Audit data flow to the Privacy and External Services sections — only your site URL is sent, and only when you actively click “Run audit”.

2.6.0

• New: JSON-LD rich snippets. The plugin now emits Schema.org structured data on every public page so Google can render rich results like star ratings, breadcrumbs and article previews directly in the search results.
• New: structured data is detected automatically per page type — homepage gets WebSite plus Organization (or LocalBusiness when a Google Business is connected), blog posts get Article plus BreadcrumbList, static pages and custom post types get WebPage plus BreadcrumbList, archives get CollectionPage plus BreadcrumbList. Search and 404 pages are intentionally left alone.
• New: when a Google Business is connected via the wizard, the aggregate star rating from your reviews is embedded into the Organization or LocalBusiness schema. With a verified rating and review count, the SERP listing for your homepage can show the gold star line out of the box.
• New: conflict detection. If Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO or SEOPress is active, yourseo skips its own JSON-LD output entirely so Google never sees duplicate schemas. A dismissible notice in the plugin admin explains what is happening.
• Note: per-post override of the schema type (e.g. mark a custom post type as Article instead of WebPage) is coming with the next feature wave alongside an on-page optimisation sidebar. For now everything is automatic.

2.5.4

• Improved: the Rank Tracker now shows a live progress counter while keywords are being checked (“Checking keyword 1 of 3…”), with skeleton rows in the keyword table so the page never looks frozen.
• Improved: when the monthly cooldown is active, the save button reads “Save” instead of “Save and check now” — the action is honest about what will happen on submit.
• Improved: Position and Change columns in the keyword table are now centred under their headers for easier scanning.
• Fixed: the “NEW” badge on the Rank Tracker tab is now translation-aware (was hardcoded before, so English installations saw a German word).
• Fixed: a stale loading banner could appear on the Rank Tracker page even when no check was running. The banner is now strictly tied to active check runs.

2.5.0

• New: Rank Tracker — track up to 3 keywords per site and see your Google position. Initial positions are fetched right when you save your keywords; after that the plugin refreshes them once a month automatically.
• New: position deltas in the keyword table show whether you climbed or dropped versus the previous month.
• New: country selector for keyword tracking — DE, AT, CH, US, GB on launch.
• New: keywords outside the top 100 are shown explicitly as “Not in top 100” so it is clear the check ran but the site did not rank.
• Privacy: when you save keywords, the keyword strings + country code are sent to api.yourseo.app to query Google rankings. See the updated Privacy section below.

2.4.0

• New: layout picker in the wizard with six widget layouts — Badge, Button, Slider, Grid, List and Sidebar. Each layout has its own colour styles.
• New: five universal styles per layout — Light (transparent), White (white surface), Dark (navy surface). Badge and Button additionally offer With border and With shadow.
• New: pick how many reviews to show (1–5) per widget — for Slider, Grid and List layouts. Visitors scroll or swipe to see all selected reviews.
• New: star-rating filter — show all reviews, 3 stars and up, 4 stars and up, or only 5-star reviews. The aggregate star rating and total review count stay accurate regardless of the filter.
• New: scrollbar replaced by arrow buttons in the Slider layout, with smooth scrolling and snap to card. The slider is fully responsive: one card on mobile, two on tablet, three on desktop.
• Improved: review cards use larger, more readable typography and defensive CSS resets that prevent aggressive themes from distorting the widget.
• Improved: the “Verified by yourseo.app” line now renders inside the container on dark widgets so it stays readable on any site background.
• Fixed: the “Create another” button could leave the submit button stuck on “…”. The submit button is now reset reliably after success or error.

2.3.0

• New: responsive sizing per breakpoint directly in the shortcode. The widget now accepts size-mobile, size-tablet and size-desktop attributes with any pixel, em or rem value — for example [yourseo size-mobile="14px" size-tablet="16px" size-desktop="18px"]. Breakpoints: mobile up to 767px, tablet 768–1023px, desktop from 1024px. Missing values cascade up from mobile.
• New: the plugin emits its own scoped <style> block alongside each widget — sizing now works reliably regardless of the page builder or theme that wraps the shortcode.
• New: “Rate our plugin” link in the plugin list meta row now that the listing is live on wordpress.org.
• Changed: simplified the create-widget wizard. The S/M/L size picker is gone; new widgets always render at a sensible default size, and you tune per device directly in the shortcode you paste into your page (see the new FAQ entry).
• Changed: dashboard widget cards no longer show a size pill — it never reflected what was actually rendered on the public site. A short help note explains the new responsive shortcode instead.
• Compatibility: existing embeds using [yourseo size="sm|md|lg"] keep working. They map to 12px/16px/22px across all breakpoints.

2.2.0

• Plugin renamed to “yourseo Reviews and SEO” with slug yourseo-reviews-and-seo, in line with WP.org plugin naming guidance.
• Removed the “Reply with AI” placeholder button and associated upgrade-prompt UI from the My reviews page. All in-plugin functionality is now available without any restriction.
• Removed the Upgrade and Get-more-reviews views entirely. Information about the separate paid plugin lives only in this readme and on yourseo.app.
• Documentation: clarified in the Description and FAQ that the manual refresh is rate-limited on the external service (api.yourseo.app), not inside the plugin code.
• Text domain renamed to yourseo-reviews-and-seo to match the new slug; language files renamed accordingly.

2.1.0

• Plugin slug renamed to yourseo (was yourseo-widget) for the WP.org submission as an all-in-one SEO plugin.
• Shortcode is now [yourseo] (was [yourseo-widget]).
• i18n: English is the default source language; a German de_DE translation is bundled and loads automatically when the WordPress locale is set to German.
• Privacy and External Services sections added.
• Plugin header description in English (standard msgid); German variant served via translation.
• Fix: UTF-8 BOM removed from PHP files — was preventing plugin activation on some hosts (fatal error).
• Upgrade page expanded to 12 features (email campaigns, NFC cards, AI replies, multi-location, etc.).

2.0.2

• Fix: first refresh right after widget creation is now allowed (the 30-day throttle was being applied too eagerly).
• Fix: the top 5 reviews show up in the Reviews tab immediately after widget creation.
• Plugin list entry: blue “Review widget” badge plus meta links.
• Upgrade card reworked: cleaner copy, 4 additional Pro features visible.

2.0.1

• 5 plugin tabs: Widget configurator, My reviews, Get more reviews, Rate us, Upgrade to Pro.
• New “My reviews” page: top-reviews view, manual refresh (free 1×/30 days, server-throttled), direct link to Google to reply.
• Dashboard widget cards now show a live preview of the widget, not just the shortcode.

2.0.0

• Full rewrite: in-WordPress wizard instead of redirecting to yourseo.app.
• Dedicated top-level admin menu.
• Persistent Google Business connection — connect once, create as many widgets as you want.
• Live autocomplete via the Google Places API.
• Dashboard with widget list, copy-to-clipboard, and delete.

1.0.0

• First public release.
• Shortcode with optional size attribute.
• UUID validation against injection.