Content freshness
Updated 2026-09-15
Content freshness is how recently a page states it was created or updated, and how well that claim matches its actual content. Grounded answers favour sources that look current for questions whose correct answer changes over time.
Which signals actually carry it
Three things travel together: a visible date on the page, a matching machine-readable date in markup, and content that genuinely reflects that date. Updating a timestamp without changing anything is a short-lived trick — the surrounding facts still date the page, and engines compare them against other sources. For price, feature and market claims, the useful discipline is to state when the fact was verified and to re-verify on a schedule rather than to refresh the stamp.
Illustrative pair (example wording)
Weak: "Updated recently" with prices from an earlier year still in the table. Strong: "Prices read from vendor pricing pages on 15 September 2026", with the same date in the markup and a source link per row. The second is quotable with its own provenance attached.
Common mistakes
- Bumping dateModified on pages nothing changed on, which trains no one and helps nothing.
- Visible date and markup date disagreeing, which is a markup mismatch rather than a freshness signal.
- Publishing year-stamped titles ("in 2026") on pages nobody will update next year.
Frequently asked questions
- Does republishing old content help AI visibility?
- Only if the content actually changed. What helps is a genuinely re-verified fact with its verification date stated; what does not is a new timestamp on unchanged text.
- How often should competitive facts be re-verified?
- Often enough that the page is not quoting a price that moved — in a fast-moving category, quarterly is a reasonable floor and every major pricing change is a trigger.
