yoast-seo-search-index-purge

silly crap redirecting all media to 404 pages, even for existing content.

The plugin creates a new XML-Sitemap which contains all attachment URLs. This is the opposite from what you are describing

"Wait 6 months and it will work." Bullshit. It's been 16+ and didn't work. Yoast makes a mistake, creates plugin to fix and it doesn't, and you're left with hours of work to fix URLs that shouldnt exist

Which is the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do. It does NOT create a 401 for the attachment page, the page loads as usual. But it actually DID send Google fresh indexes for all attachment pages in its XML - so they've been re-indexed all over again. Guys please fix this! This plugin actually made the issue WORSE.

My theme has been changed by that.

YOAST, this is a nightmare. First you made a big mistake releasing plugin update with this media URL mess, that many people suffer from, and that many still are not aware the issue exist as we did not clearly got a notification for the mistake you made. You created a plugin to help remove media URL from Google fast, but it does not work at all! I tried even if I was reluctant due to what I was reading, new sitemap was generated with attachment urls, but NONE would return a 410, instead, attachment urls were being indexed and 492 NEW ERRORS in my GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE. Come on guys you made a mistake, it happens, the least would be to provide a working patch, not a bad plugin creating another mess. So much time lost on this it's driving me crazy... Website related to this issue is YOAST PREMIUM, please get back to me.