Issue Summary

After upgrading Confluence from 9.2.3 to 9.2.6, pages that use the Labels List macro take a much longer time to load (~10x longer).

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Confluence version 9.2.6
2. Import a space (spacekey=ST) with than 320000 pages (space xml is attached in ST-ST-2025-07-10-16-02-24-050.xml_2025-08-05T04_20_20.672Z.zip)
3. Create additional users and added some page restrictions to some pages in the space.
4. Enable faster permissions.
5. Fetch the content IDs by issuing this query, and save the results as labels.txt:

   SELECT c.contentid
   FROM CONTENT c
   JOIN BODYCONTENT bc
   	ON c.contentid = bc.contentid
   JOIN SPACES s
   	ON c.spaceid = s.spaceid
   WHERE c.prevver IS NULL
           AND c.contenttype IN ('PAGE', 'BLOGPOST')
           AND c.CONTENT_STATUS='current'
   		AND s.spacekey='ST'
   

6. Utilize the fetched content IDs to create a bash script that adds unique labels to these pages (attached as label_2025-08-05T04_19_49.540Z.sh).
7. Reorder some pages in the page tree.
8. Perform a site reindex.
9. Add a page (in a separate personal space) and add the Labels List macro (configured to display 5000 labels from the ST space).

Expected Results

The page should load quickly with little delay (about 1 second)

Actual Results

The page takes about 10 seconds to fully load.

Workaround

Reduce the number of labels displayed by the Labels List macro.

Note

You may also run the following SQL queries to assess the current usage of the Popular Label macro within your instance.

To identify Confluence pages with Popular Label macro and their last modifier

SELECT c.contentid, c.contenttype, c.title, s.spacekey, um.lower_username, c.lastmoddate
FROM CONTENT c
JOIN BODYCONTENT bc
    ON c.contentid = bc.contentid
JOIN SPACES s
    ON c.spaceid = s.spaceid
JOIN user_mapping um
    ON c.lastmodifier = um.user_key
WHERE c.prevver IS NULL
AND c.contenttype IN ('PAGE', 'BLOGPOST')
AND bc.body LIKE '%ac:structured-macro ac:name="popular-labels"%'
ORDER BY s.spacekey, c.lastmoddate DESC;

To identify the users who frequently uses Popular Label macro

SELECT c.contentid, c.contenttype, c.title, s.spacekey, um.lower_username, c.lastmoddate
FROM CONTENT c
JOIN BODYCONTENT bc
    ON c.contentid = bc.contentid
JOIN SPACES s
    ON c.spaceid = s.spaceid
JOIN user_mapping um
    ON c.lastmodifier = um.user_key
WHERE c.prevver IS NULL
AND c.contenttype IN ('PAGE', 'BLOGPOST')
AND bc.body LIKE '%ac:structured-macro ac:name="popular-labels"%'
ORDER BY s.spacekey, c.lastmoddate DESC;