Freshness and AI citations: how often should you update your pages?
AI assistants lean towards newer content than Google does. That doesn't mean changing the date every month. Here is what the data supports.
"Update your content every 30 days for AI" is advice we see weekly. The data says something more useful, and less tiring.
What the study found
Ahrefs analysed about 17 million cited URLs across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews, and compared their age with Google's organic results (published July 2025).
| Platform | Cited content vs organic results |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT (citations) | About 458 days newer |
| ChatGPT (references) | About 393 days newer |
| Copilot | About 360 days newer |
| Gemini | About 298 days newer |
| Perplexity | About 250 days newer |
| Google AI Overviews | About 16 days older |
Ahrefs' own caveats: dates are when its crawler first saw a page, the average cited page was still about 2.9 years old, and freshness is one factor among many. Some figures in the write-up don't perfectly reconcile, so treat them as directional.
How to read it
- Relevance first. In Ahrefs' separate study of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts, the median cited search result was about 500 days old. An old page that answers the question still wins.
- Freshness breaks ties. Between two equally relevant pages, assistants other than AI Overviews lean to the newer one.
- News is different. For time-sensitive topics, freshness decides.
How often to update
| Page type | Update when |
|---|---|
| Pillar guides and comparisons | Quarterly review; update when facts, prices or tools change |
| Statistics pages | Whenever a source publishes new numbers |
| Fast-moving topics (AI search, store changes) | When the platform changes; date the change |
| Evergreen how-tos | When the steps change |
| Case studies | Only to add results; keep original dates visible |
Update honestly
- Change the substance: new data, a new section, corrected facts.
- Set the updated date and sitemap lastmod to the day of the real change, and keep schema dateModified in sync.
- Ping Bing with IndexNow so the update is picked up quickly.
- Don't just change the date. Ahrefs quotes Google's John Mueller warning against updating publish dates without changing content.
Ahrefs also suggested most brands gain more from new, high-quality pages than from frequent refreshes of old ones. Spend your update time on the pages that already earn impressions.
Questions people ask
Do AI assistants prefer fresh content?
Mostly yes. Ahrefs found AI-cited content was about 25.7% fresher than Google organic results, though Google AI Overviews cited slightly older content than organic results.
How often should I update content for AI search?
When something real changes. Review pillar pages quarterly, update statistics when sources do, and update fast-moving topics when platforms change.
Does changing the date on a page help?
Not without real changes. Google has warned against updating publish dates without changing content, and accurate dates are what make lastmod and dateModified trustworthy.
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