Empty link tag in RSS feed when 'Discourage search engines from indexing site' is enabled

[amboutwe]

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• I've searched for any related issues and avoided creating a duplicate issue.

Please give us a description of what happened

The link tag for the homepage RSS feed is empty when the entire site is noindexed. This causes the feed to be invalid, meaning that any customization or integration with the RSS feed cannot be validated in a staging/development site before pushing to a production environment.

Regression related to this PR. The issue does not happen with 19.2 but does happen in 19.3, 20.8, and 20.9 versions.

Workaround

The warnings can be ignored if they are the only lines that cause the feed not to validate, as they would not occur when the site is visible to search engines.

To Reproduce

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

Starting with a vanilla installation:

1. Go to Admin > Settings > Reading
2. Check 'Discourage search engines from indexing site'
3. Go to feed (example.com/feed/)
4. See the valid link tag of <link>https://example.com</link>
5. Install and activate Yoast SEO (free)
6. Go to feed (example.com/feed/)
7. See the empty link tag of <link></link>

Expected results

1. Link tag would be valid despite discouraging search engines

Actual results

1. Empty link tag when search engines are discouraged from indexing the site

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Without Yoast (same when using v19.2)

With Yoast 20.9 (same when using v19.3)

Technical info

Used versions

• Device you are using: N/A
• Operating system: N/A
• PHP version: N/A
• WordPress version: 6.2.2
• WordPress Theme: Twenty Twenty-Three v1.1
• Yoast SEO version: 20.9 (also happens with 20.8 and 19.3 but not in 19.2)
• Relevant plugins in case of a bug: N/A

[amboutwe]

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[VictoriaMcCarter]

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[shabnam611]

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