Slow to edit product category meta titles or descriptions

[amboutwe]

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

Please give us a description of what happened

The issue is similar to https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/19165 but occurs when editing a product category.

We have a rather large Woocommerce site with some 21,000 products, of which most are components of bundles or composite products. Therefore only 1800 live products.

To Reproduce

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Have a large complex WooCommerce setup with Yoast SEO
2. Go to Admin > Products > Categories
3. Edit a child category where the parent category has over 1000 assigned products
4. Scroll to Yoast meta box
5. Type a new SEO title or meta description
6. Experience slowness

Complex WooCommerce setup Create at least 3000 products Create at least 1500 product categories of various depths (parent, child, or further) Assign a parent category to at least 1000 products Assign a child category of the above parent category to at least 5 products Assign at least 2 products to both the parent and child category.

Expected results

Normal edit times

Actual results

Slow to edit

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen recordings of the issue in ticket 1134458.

Technical info

• Which browser is affected (or browsers):

• [x] Chrome
• [ ] Firefox
• [ ] Safari
• [ ] Other:

Used versions

• Device you are using: Desktop
• Operating system: Win 11
• PHP version: 8.1
• WordPress version: 6.5.3
• WordPress Theme: Twenty Twenty-Two (twentytwentytwo)
• Yoast SEO version: 22.7
• Relevant plugins in case of a bug: WooCommerce 8.8.3