• I've read and understood the contribution guidelines.
• I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Please give us a description of what happened.

Note: This has been verified by the Yoast Tech Support Team and reproduced in a testing environment.

Version 14.9 of Yoast SEO plugin triggers a WP Database Error - triggered by exhausting server resources. This happens when a certain # of Posts/Pages - above some threshold - are attributed to a single WP author. In our case, one author has about 800 posts.

Yoast tech team verified that splitting posts among multiple users does not trigger error. Also, Version 14.8.1 and all earlier versions do not trigger this bug.

Please describe what you expected to happen and why.

See above.

How can we reproduce this behavior?

1. Install version 14.9 of Yoast SEO
2. Publish a lot of posts/pages (pages in our case) to a single author. Note - we're not certain of the exact threshold - 300 does not trigger the bug, but 800 does.

Technical info

• If relevant, which editor is affected (or editors):

• Classic Editor
• Gutenberg
• Classic Editor plugin

• Which browser is affected (or browsers):

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari
• Other

Used versions

• WordPress version: 5.5.1
• Yoast SEO version: 14.9
• Gutenberg plugin version:
• Classic Editor plugin version:
• Relevant plugins in case of a bug: All other plugins deactivated

• Tested with theme: Default