Why Your Site Says 'Non-Production Environment' in Yoast SEO (And How to Fix It)

If you've logged into your WordPress dashboard and seen the message "Oops! The SEO score and readability score overview cannot be viewed because you are using a non-production environment," you're not alone. This is a common point of confusion for users of the Yoast SEO plugin. This guide will explain what this message means and walk you through the steps to resolve it.

What Does the "Non-Production Environment" Message Mean?

This message is a feature, not a bug. The Yoast SEO plugin is designed to detect the environment your website is running on. A "non-production environment" typically refers to a staging or development site—a copy of your live website used for testing updates and changes before making them public.

The plugin disables the SEO and readability score overview on these non-live sites to prevent search engines like Google from accidentally indexing test content, which could harm your site's search rankings. Seeing this message indicates that Yoast SEO believes your site is not the live, public-facing version.

Why This Might Happen on Your Live Site

The most common reason for seeing this alert on a site you believe is live is that your website's environment settings have not been updated after a significant change. This frequently occurs after:

• Migrating a website from a temporary domain to its final, permanent domain.
• Moving a site from a local development server (like MAMP or XAMPP) to a live web host.
• Cloning a site to create a staging environment and then pushing it back to live.
• Changing your site's URL structure (from HTTP to HTTPS, or from a non-www to a www version).

During these processes, certain configuration values that WordPress and Yoast SEO use to identify the site's environment may not have been updated correctly.

How to Fix the "Non-Production Environment" Alert

Follow these troubleshooting steps to resolve the issue.

Step 1: Clear Your Caches

First, clear all caching layers. This includes:

• Your WordPress caching plugin (e.g., WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache).
• Your server-level or host-provided cache (check your hosting control panel).
• Your browser cache.

After clearing all caches, reload your WordPress dashboard to see if the message disappears.

Step 2: Verify Your Site's Environment in WordPress

WordPress has a built-in way to check its environment setting. Here's how to find it:

1. Navigate to Tools > Site Health in your WordPress admin menu.
2. Click on the Info tab.
3. Scroll down to the WordPress section.
4. Look for the Environment field.

If this field is set to "production,&quot> but Yoast still shows the warning, proceed to the next step. If it is set to anything else (like "staging" or "development"), the issue is with your WordPress configuration. You or your developer may need to define the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE constant in your wp-config.php file and set it to 'production'.

Step 3: Run a Site Health Check

While still in the Site Health tool, go to the Status tab. Run any recommended checks and address critical issues. Sometimes, a misconfiguration flagged here can affect how plugins like Yoast SEO perceive your site's status.

Step 4: Re-save Your Permalinks

A simple but often effective step is to refresh your website's permalink structure.

1. Go to Settings > Permalinks in WordPress.
2. Without making any changes, simply click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

This action can flush rewrite rules and resolve inconsistencies that might be causing the environment detection to fail.

Important Note: This Does Not Affect Indexing

It is crucial to understand that this message is not preventing your site from being indexed by search engines. As seen in the sample threads, users often fear this message is the reason their site isn't ranking. However, the message is an internal dashboard notification only. If your site is not appearing in search results, the cause is almost certainly unrelated to this Yoast SEO alert. You should investigate other common SEO issues, such as a noindex tag, robots.txt file disallow directives, or a manual penalty in Google Search Console.

When to Seek Further Help

If you have completed all the steps above and the message persists, the issue may be more complex. The problem could be related to how your web server is configured or a conflict with another plugin or theme. In such cases, the standard troubleshooting process of temporarily switching to a default theme (like Twenty Twenty-Four) and disabling all other plugins can help identify a conflict.

Since BugWP.com is an independent resource, we recommend searching for your specific hosting provider or server setup along with "WordPress environment type" for more targeted advice if the problem continues.