Yoast Premium 16+ causes category redirects

Marking this as resolved since we haven’t heard reports of any further issues after the 16.0.3 fix.

Yoast has released Yoast SEO Premium 16.0.3 with a fix for this issue.

I tested it on several sites, and at first it still has the same problem, but then simply reloading or browsing to any page in the dashboard clears it up. So at this point I believe it’s safe to update to 16.0.3, just be sure to reload a page in your dashboard after updating, and then double-check that your Category Archives are working properly.

After updating Yoast SEO Premium to 16.0, 16.0.1, or 16.0.2, category archive URLs will 301 redirect to the homepage (or in some cases we’ve seen them not redirect, but display the content of the homepage).

We’ve been in communication with Yoast, and they are implementing a fix to be released with version 16.0.3.

In the meantime, if you use Yoast SEO Premium, and have already updated to 16.x, please double-check that your Category archives are displaying properly. If not, go to Settings > Permalinks and click “Save” (without making any other changes), and then clear all caches. That should resolve the issue on your site.

Note that this issue only impacts the premium version.