INDUSTRY UPDATE: Yoast SEO
Clearlake Capital bought Endurance International Group and Web.com and rebranded as Newfold Digital.
Newfold is technically a new company, created from EIG (the worst thing to happen to hosting ever, and a company that destroyed many good hosting companies in the past 10 years).
E.I.G. is known to have some of the slowest hosting servers including HostGator and Bluehost.
What do we predict the future holds for Yoast SEO as a part of a shady business like EIG?
The Yoast SEO plugin is used by millions of websites, and I am sure that some of these will switch to something else soon. Personally I prefer to use RankMath. I have also seen many people recommend SEOPress.
Most of the Yoast users will not be aware of this change and what it might mean in the long run, so it gives a lot of power to a company like EIG to run ads and influence website owners to switch to their hosting solutions. And, that might be the main reason behind this purchase – access to a huge user base that comes with the Free or Pro version of Yoast SEO. I doubt they have much need to make the plugin better, it will likely be used to run ads.