Caching

Rendered markup is stored per page and reused until the content or your settings change. Saving a post, editing a term, or changing any schema clears the cache for you.

Saving a schema, Site Identity or the Tools settings also asks your page cache to empty itself, so visitors and Google get the new markup straight away. That covers NimbleCache, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, SiteGround Speed Optimizer, Breeze, WP-Optimize and Cloudflare's own plugin (which clears APO). LiteSpeed Cache is asked for its pages only: its CSS and JS files, the object cache and Cloudflare stay as they are. Another cache can listen for the trasl_schema_changed action; a CDN or host cache that is none of these may still need clearing by hand. On a WooCommerce shop, a change to a product's stock, price or reviews — an order, a scheduled sale, a new review — clears that product's stored markup straight away.

Addresses that differ only in a tracking parameter, such as utm_source, share one stored copy. Nothing is stored for logged-in visitors, previews, private or password-protected posts or search results, so what an editor sees is always current and never reaches anyone else. Every page that is not found (a 404) shares one stored copy too: nothing in its markup comes from the address.

A change to an author's profile that their markup is made from (name, website, biographical info, the Author Markup fields, or the profile fields of Yoast SEO or Rank Math) empties the stored markup and asks the page caches above to empty themselves, when that author has published posts. On a network the stored markup of every site they write on is emptied; another site's page cache refreshes on its own schedule.

If you change content outside WordPress — a direct database edit, or an import — use Clear schema cache on the Tools screen. It empties the page caches listed above as well.

An update that changes the markup of pages already stored, such as the new form of a product on sale, empties the stored markup and asks the page caches above to empty themselves once, on the first request after the update.

The automatic description of a post is its excerpt, or the first 55 words of its content with shortcodes and blocks removed, the way WordPress makes an excerpt. A page that is only a shortcode, or one built from page-builder shortcodes, is therefore not described as the shortcode itself; if nothing readable is left, the description is left out. A members-only or password-protected post is never described from its content (see Automatic fields).