In short. Yoast SEO documents separate feed families and links the global comments and post comments settings.
Definition: Yoast SEO's crawl optimization has switches for removing WordPress feed families and feed formats. The documented families cover recent posts, comments, authors, post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and search results, with a separate switch for Atom and RDF formats.
Key facts
- The global feed represents an overview of recent posts, with the documented example
https://www.example.com/feed/.Yoast's crawl optimization documentation - The global comments feed represents recent comments at
https://www.example.com/comments/feed/.Yoast's documentation - Post comments use a per-post feed such as
https://www.example.com/example-post/feed/.Yoast's documentation - WordPress documents separate RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom and comments RSS 2.0 feed URLs.WordPress's feed documentation
- Yoast's Atom/RDF switch applies
/atomor/rdfsuffixes to the feed examples, including global and comment feeds.Yoast's documentation
Which feed families are covered?
Yoast's Disable unwanted content formats section describes switches for these URL families: the global feed, global comments, post comments, post authors, post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and search results. The examples identify the archive or query behind each family. A compact map of the documented examples is:
/feed/
/comments/feed/
/example-post/feed/
/author/admin/feed/
/category/fiction/feed/
/tag/fantasy/feed/
/book-genre/crime/feed/
/?s=world
/search/world/feed/rss2/
The global feed is for recent posts. Author, post type, category, tag and custom taxonomy feeds provide recent posts for their respective archive. The search feed corresponds to search results. Yoast describes the global and post comment families separately, even though their settings are linked.
How are the comment feeds linked?
WordPress describes its comments RSS 2.0 feed as containing comments made on the site and documents post_comments_feed_link() for tracking comments on a specific post. The two scopes therefore correspond to a site-wide comments URL and a per-post comments URL.
Yoast documents a dependency between the two switches: disabling Remove global comments feed also disables post comments feeds, and the post-comments switch is automatically enabled or disabled when Remove global comments is changed. The documented examples are:
https://www.example.com/comments/feed/
https://www.example.com/example-post/feed/
The linked behavior matters when auditing settings. A per-post comment feed should be considered together with the global comments feed because the Yoast documentation describes their controls as coupled.
What does the Atom/RDF switch change?
Yoast describes Atom and RDF as specific feed formats. Its examples add /atom or /rdf to feed URLs already listed in the page:
https://www.example.com/feed/atom
https://www.example.com/feed/rdf
https://www.example.com/comments/feed/atom
https://www.example.com/comments/feed/rdf
https://www.example.com/hello-world/feed/atom
https://www.example.com/hello-world/feed/rdf
WordPress's built-in feed documentation names RDF/RSS 1.0 and Atom alongside RSS 0.92 and RSS 2.0. The Yoast switch therefore concerns format variants across the feed families, rather than a separate archive family.
Where is the setting and what should be checked?
The documented path is WordPress Dashboard, Yoast SEO, Settings, Advanced, then Crawl optimization. Yoast says the feed switches can keep or remove the various feeds and are not automatically disabled for every site because user needs differ. A URL review can check the global, comments, post, archive, search and format examples against the selected switches, with the global comments setting checked alongside post comment feeds.
Related terms
- How do I choose full text or excerpts in WordPress feeds?
- Where is the built-in WordPress XML sitemap?
- How do I enable XML sitemaps in Yoast SEO?
FAQ
Does removing the global feed remove every WordPress feed?
No. Yoast documents separate switches for authors, post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, search results and feed formats. The global feed switch is documented with the /feed/ example.
Does the global comments setting affect post comment feeds?
Yes. Yoast states that disabling the global comments feed also disables post comments feeds, and that changing the global comments setting automatically changes the post-comments setting.
Which feed formats are named in the documentation?
WordPress names RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom and comments RSS 2.0. Yoast separately documents /atom and /rdf URL suffixes for the feed examples.
Sources
- Yoast, "Yoast SEO settings: Crawl optimization", 7 April 2026
- WordPress Developer Resources, "WordPress Feeds", undated
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