seo/update-archive-seo configures the special archives that belong to no single content type: the author archive, the date archive, and the site-wide search and 404 pages.
Each can be given a title and description template, disabled outright, or left reachable but noindexed — and disabling is not the same as noindexing.
At a glance
| Ability | seo/update-archive-seo |
| Toolset | Yoast SEO — toolset/yoast-seo |
| Group | Yoast SEO › Content Types |
| Requires | Yoast SEO, active on the site |
| Capability | manage_options |
| Safety | Writes data |
| Repeatable | Idempotent — running it twice leaves the same result |
| Ships in | AcrossAI Abilities Manager 0.0.34 and later |
How it works
A disabled archive redirects away entirely. A noindexed one stays reachable and is simply absent from search results. For pages that appear in navigation or that people link to, the difference is between breaking a URL and quietly excluding it.
Date archives are the usual candidate for disabling. Almost nothing links to them, they duplicate content that exists elsewhere, and they generate one indexable page per month the site has existed.
Author archives are the usual candidate for noindexing rather than disabling, because they are sometimes linked from bylines — and a byline linking to a redirect is worse than one linking to a page that happens not to be indexed.
Search and 404 are noindexed by default and should stay that way. What is worth setting on them is the template, since it is the only thing that decides what they are called.
Idempotent.
Input
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
settings | object | Yes | A map of setting key to new value. Keys outside this area are refused. |
What comes back
| Name | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
updated | array | The keys that changed. |
settings | object | The area after the write. |
success | boolean | Whether the call completed. |
message | string | A one-line summary of what happened, suitable for showing a human. |
error_code | string | Present only on failure — a stable machine-readable reason, such as a missing field, a wrong field type or an unmet confirmation. |
Example
Ask your assistant:
Disable the date archives and noindex the author archive.
It resolves to one call:
{
"ability": "seo/update-archive-seo",
"parameters": {
"settings": { "disable-date": true, "noindex-author-wpseo": true }
}
}Worth knowing
- Disabled redirects; noindexed stays reachable.
- Date archives are the safe thing to disable.
- Author archives are usually better noindexed than disabled, because bylines link to them.
- Search and 404 should stay noindexed.
Related abilities
- Update Archive And Indexing Settings — the per-type version
- Get Author Archive SEO — check the result
- Update System Page SEO — the search and 404 titles
Get the plugins:
AcrossAI Abilities Manager · AcrossAI MCP Manager
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