Content freshness, and why AI engines care about it

The Content Freshness report lists what has not been updated in a long time, so you can decide what to revisit. It signals freshness to both LLMs and readers.

Why it matters for AI answers

An assistant answering a question with a date in it, or about anything that changes, prefers a source that looks current. A page last touched three years ago competes badly against one updated last month, even when the older page is better written.

This is a signal, not a ranking rule. Nobody outside the engines knows the weighting. What is knowable is that a stale date gives an engine a reason to prefer somebody else, and removing that reason costs you an afternoon.

Running the scan

RankReady, Insights, Freshness, then Scan Content Freshness. The scan reads post dates; it does not call any AI provider and costs nothing.

What to do with the result

• Update the pages that get traffic first. A stale page nobody reads is not worth the hour.
• Change something real. Bumping the modified date without editing the content is the kind of thing engines learn to discount.
• Regenerate the summary and FAQ after a substantial edit, so the AI-facing copy matches the page.

What it does not do

It does not edit anything, and it does not republish. It is a report.