[Feature Request] Provide the ability to completely disable text link counting.

[rmarcano]

Disabling the Text Link Counter feature will still cause links in content to be analyzed and inserted in the "_yoast_seo_links" table. We've received a request for a way (toggle or filter) to completely disable this, since this feature might be disabled on large sites for performance reasons.

Report from the user:
On post save, in wordpress-seo-premium/admin/links/class-link-content-processor.php - WPSEO_Link_Content_Processor::process() it counts links and calls WPSEO_Link_Storage::save_links() without bothering to check the setting. In our case, posts with 200+ links are invoking 200+ INSERTs into the yoast_seo_links table. Due to replication in our current setup, this can take seconds per INSERT query which causes a massive performance issue. Luckily WPSEO_Link_Table_Accessible can be fooled into aborting if the table is renamed, but ideally either the Admin setting, or a dedicated apply_filters could disable this functionality.

[rmarcano]

Please inform the customer of conversation # 343730 when this conversation has been closed.

[hbcondo]

Is there an ETA as to when this issue will be resolved? If not, is there a workaround / temp fix to stop records from being inserted into yoast_seo_links even when the feature is OFF? We are experiencing the same problem as @rmarcano described.

[IreneStr]

@jdevalk There are some decisions that need to be made around the flow.

There are multiple use cases:

1. A user has had link counts enabled for a while, and disables it with the intent of never enabling it again.
2. A user has had link counts enabled for a while, and disables it with the intent of enabling it again later.
3. A user has a clean installation/never had link counts enabled.

Questions:

• Do we want to enforce that we have link (count) data available at all times because we have (/will have) functionality that depends on it?
• If not, do we want to support use case 2 at all?
• Should all link data be removed on disabling the feature?
  • This means a full reindex would be needed when it's enabled again.
• If not, what should the flow look like?
  • Even if we don't remove the data, but only stop saving new link data to the database, all saved data may not be accurate anymore, and will require a full reindex.

[IreneStr]

See #12751 (comment) for the conclusions about the questions above.