Content freshness

Content freshness is a measure of how recently a page was published or substantially updated, and of how current its information is. Google favors fresher pages only for queries that call for them, while AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Gemini tend to cite newer pages than Google's organic results.

Why content freshness matters, engine by engine

Freshness does not weigh the same everywhere. Ahrefs analyzed 16.975 million URLs cited by AI assistants or ranking in Google's organic results. ChatGPT showed the strongest preference for new content, while Google's AI Overviews showed none at all:

Cited by	Published, vs organic results	Last updated, vs organic results
ChatGPT (citations)	458 days newer	58 days newer
Microsoft Copilot	360 days newer	182 days newer
Gemini	298 days newer	216 days newer
Google AI Overviews (top 3 citations)	16 days older	21 days older

Look at the ChatGPT row. Its citations were far newer by publication date, but only 58 days newer by last update, which suggests the gap comes more from new pages than from refreshed ones.

How content freshness works

Each engine decides when recency matters:

Google runs "query deserves freshness" systems that show fresher content "for queries where it would be expected", such as reviews of a film that just came out.
ChatGPT "may search the web automatically when your question would benefit from current information," then rewrites the prompt into search queries. This grounding step is how recent pages reach its answers.
Dates come from the page and from crawlers. Ahrefs, for example, dated each page by when its crawler first saw it.

Google also closes the obvious loophole. Its helpful content guide flags "changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed," and says adding or removing content to look fresh won't help.

Example: a prompt about the latest news

OpenAI gives its own example. A researcher asks ChatGPT: "what's the latest on the development of drugs that target CCR8 for cancer?" ChatGPT might first search for "CCR8 immunotherapy drug development 2025", then send more specific queries such as "CHS-114 conference 2025".

The year lands in the query itself. A page that covers the topic well but stops at an earlier year is less likely to match those searches, however good it is. OpenAI also tells users to check, for each cited source, "when it was published or updated." A visible, honest date serves the reader as much as the engine.

How to keep content fresh

Start with pages tied to recency: prices, "best X" listicles, comparisons, statistics.
Update the substance first, then the visible date. Never change the date alone.
Do not churn. Ahrefs' own caveat: the average cited page is still 2.9 years old, and most brands may get more from new, high-quality content than from constant updates.

Then weigh a refresh against your other work. Hawkscan's action plan turns what it reads in ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode answers into actions ranked by impact, such as a cited page that names your competitors but not you, or an AI crawler your site blocks.