Answer engines prefer to cite old pages that have been regularly updated
A pilot study of 356 cited pages among 59 prompt queries shows a clear preference of answer engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews towards regularly updated pages. The typical cited page is two years old. Seven in ten were edited in the last year. Only four in ten were written in the last year.
What this means for us: only 35% of cited pages are under a year old. Refreshing the pages we already have beats publishing new ones — keeping content updated can be important to get cited.
1.9 yrs
typical age of a cited page (half are older)
69%
were edited in the last 12 months
#Summary
- Answer engines seem to be biased to cite old pages that have been recently updated instead of fresh new pages.
- The typical cited page is two years old. Half were published more than two years ago; one in six before 2020.
- Seven in ten were edited in the last year. Only four in ten were written in the last year.
- Plotted by half-year, publish dates are spread across a decade. Last-edit dates are almost all at the right edge: six in ten fall in 2026.
- ChatGPT cites the most recently edited pages. The two Google surfaces are indistinguishable from each other.
- The page cited first tends to be fresher than the pages cited after it.
#Takeaways
##ChatGPT cites the freshest pages
- 55% of ChatGPT’s cited articles were edited in the last 90 days, against 39% for both Google surfaces. Median 76 days since edit vs 125. (Declared dates only.)
- The two Google surfaces are indistinguishable from each other on every freshness measure.
- All three cite articles of the same age since publish — about 440 days. The difference is entirely in how recently the page was edited. ChatGPT’s live search appears to reward the edit; Google’s index appears to reward the page.
##The first citation is fresher than the rest
- The page cited in position one had a median edit age of 73 days; every other position, 121 days.
- Small sample (37 first positions with a declared date), so treat this as a direction. But it points the same way as the engine result: recency of edit goes with prominence, not just with inclusion.
##SaaS is the freshest
Declared dates only.
| Vertical | Median days since created | Median days since edit |
|---|---|---|
| SaaS | 497 | 86 |
| Finance | 255 | 125 |
| Local services | 324 | 125 |
| Travel | 517 | 135 |
| Shopping | 484 | 125 |
- SaaS pages are the oldest and the most recently edited — pricing pages, comparison pages and integration catalogues are living documents.
- Shopping is the opposite: two-year-old gift guides and “best of” roundups still being cited, a third of them untouched in over a year.
- Finance and local services cite younger pages than the rest.
- Wellness had too few dated citations to report.
##What this changes about the work
- The instinct to publish new pages to get cited is backwards on this data. The page that gets cited has existed long enough to be indexed, linked and trusted — and was edited recently enough to be current.
- That makes the refresh the unit of work, not the post: revisit the pages that already rank, update the facts, and stamp the date.
- This is related to a finding from the answer-quality study: most factual errors in AI answers were staleness, not invention. The engines cite maintained pages because maintained pages are where the current facts are.
#Method
#Caveats
- Two fifths of the headline set is estimated, and the estimates lean in known directions. 141 of 356 pages carry at least one Wayback-derived date. A first-capture date is an upper bound on creation, so estimated publish bars lean late: the blue bars are, if anything, too far right, and the pages are older than drawn. Last-edit windows have a median width of about four months; the midpoint can miss by two. 27 rotating listings are pinned to the run date and account for part of the tallest orange bar. Drop them and “edited in the last year” moves from 69% to 66%; the median time since edit from 145 to 172 days. The shape survives.
- The declared dates are the pages’ own. We take each page’s created and modified markup at its word. A page can overstate freshness (a template that re-stamps on every deploy) or understate it (a real edit with no date change). The 24-hour and header exclusions catch the loudest overstatement; nothing catches the understatement.
- A third of citations could not be dated at all. 198 platform pages never state dates: Google’s own search, Shopping and Maps links (101), YouTube (34), Reddit (31), Instagram (9), Facebook (7), plus a handful of app-store and LinkedIn links; 104 ordinary pages were never archived, are JS-rendered or PDF, or refused the fetch. The headline describes the pages that could be dated.
- One day’s snapshot. 356 dated pages across 59 prompts. Engine and vertical gaps under ~10 points are within noise until they repeat across runs; the headline shape — old page, recent edit — is large enough to trust.
- Correlation, not cause. Engines may cite fresh pages because they prefer freshness, or because the pages worth citing happen to be the ones people maintain. This study can’t separate the two.
- Signed-out and free tiers only. Logged-in or paid surfaces may cite differently.
##However, estimates don’t seem to change the outcome
- Restrict to the 213 citations whose page declares a usable edit date, with nothing estimated, and the numbers move but the shape doesn’t: median age 15 months, median time since edit 4 months.
- Three quarters of those were edited within the year; seven in ten had been edited after they were published; the median gap from publish to last edit is 419 days.
- The declared set is fresher than the blended set because publishers who mark up dates are the publishers who go back and edit. The Wayback check on undated pages (see Method) is what pulls “three quarters” down to “seven in ten”.
- The stalest cited article we found was a 2017 travel-blog post never touched since. It is the exception; the middle of the distribution is a maintained page.
#Examples
Three of the 59 prompts, with every page the engine cited, the dates we found and where each updated date came from. Expand one to see the rows.
Google AI Mode · finance · “What is the best strategy in managing credit card debt while growing a credit score?”
| # | Page | Published | Updated | Updated date source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | experian.com /blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/impr… | 2026-05-08 | 2026-05-08 | declared: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 2 | consumerfinance.gov /ask-cfpb/how-do-i-get-and-keep-a-good-cr… | 2017-07-05 ~ | 2024-12-22 ~ | approx: Wayback bracket midpoint |
| 3 | johnsonfinancialgroup.com /resources/blogs/your-financial-life/unde… | 2019-11-13 | 2024-07-10 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 4 | upgrade.com /credit-health/insights/better-money-habits | 2025-10-30 | 2026-08-19 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 5 | experian.com /blogs/ask-experian/what-debt-to-pay-off… | 2025-01-16 | 2025-01-16 | declared: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 6 | mycreditunion.gov /brochure-publications/brochure/money-bas… | 2025-01-22 | 2025-06-12 | declared: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 7 | experian.com /blogs/ask-experian/ways-to-improve-credit | 2025-11-25 | 2025-11-25 | declared: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 8 | hancockwhitney.com /insights/7-steps-improve-credit-score | 2025-07-16 | 2025-08-25 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 9 | westernsouthern.com /personal-finance/manage-credit-card-debt | 2025-06-04 | 2025-06-04 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 10 | noblebank.com /effective-credit-card-management-strategies | 2024-08-06 | 2024-12-05 ~ | approx: unchanged since first capture |
| 11 | schwab.com /learn/story/how-to-improve-credit-score | — | 2026-06-11 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 12 | nerdwallet.com /finance/learn/raise-credit-score-fast | 2019-08-21 | 2026-02-25 | declared in an old capture: JSON-LD dateModified |
ChatGPT · saas · “whats the best hosted vm service for running automated test suites? i need to spin up browsers and run selenium tests without managing the infra myself”
| # | Page | Published | Updated | Updated date source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | browserstack.com / | — | 2026-09-06 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 2 | browserstack.com /cloud-selenium-grid | — | 2025-04-03 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 3 | saucelabs.com / | 2008-09-24 ~ | 2025-08-22 ~ | approx: Wayback bracket midpoint |
| 4 | lambdatest.com / | 2025-01-01 | 2026-05-22 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 5 | testingbot.com / | 2011-12-03 ~ | 2023-10-24 ~ | approx: Wayback bracket midpoint |
| 6 | testingbot.com /features/automation/selenium | 2022-01-19 ~ | 2026-07-12 ~ | approx: Wayback bracket midpoint |
| 7 | testingbot.com /support/web-automate/selenium | 2025-07-09 ~ | 2026-06-14 ~ | approx: unchanged since first capture |
| 8 | github.com /features/actions | 2018-10-16 ~ | — | none |
| 9 | circleci.com / | 2026-09-11 | 2025-11-17 ~ | approx: Wayback bracket midpoint |
| 10 | aws.amazon.com /ec2 | 2008-08-19 ~ | 2026-08-27 | declared in an old capture: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 11 | testgrid.io /cloud-selenium-grid | 2026-04-17 ~ | 2026-04-17 ~ | approx: unchanged since first capture |
Google AI Overview · shopping · “what are the best cameras that are known for their insane detail and quality in images”
| # | Page | Published | Updated | Updated date source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | thecotswoldphotographer.com /best-cameras-2025-value-performance | 2025-07-28 | 2026-09-01 | declared: Open Graph og:updated_time |
| 2 | dpreview.com /reviews/buying-guide-best-high-end-cameras | 2023-11-13 | 2023-11-15 | declared in an old capture: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 3 | digitalcameraworld.com /buying-guides/the-10-highest-resolution… | 2022-09-06 | 2025-10-28 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 4 | techradar.com /cameras/the-best-camera-for-photography | 2025-11-27 | 2026-08-10 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 5 | photographylife.com /best-mirrorless-camera | 2018-12-25 | 2026-04-08 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 6 | digitalcameraworld.com /buying-guides/the-best-medium-format-camera | 2022-11-03 | 2026-04-21 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 7 | clippingexpertasia.com /blog/top-10-highest-resolution-cameras-m… | 2026-06-13 | 2026-06-13 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 8 | martinkleinheinz.de /en/digital-medium-format-cameras | 2025-08-02 | 2026-05-25 | declared: JSON-LD dateModified |
| 9 | photococamera.com /best-medium-format-cameras-2025-professi… | 2025-10-06 | 2025-10-07 | declared: Open Graph article:modified_time |
| 10 | google.com /search (Shopping product) | — | — | platform page, no dates |
| 11 | google.com /search (Shopping product) | — | — | platform page, no dates |
A ~ marks a Wayback Machine estimate. Full set of data tracking created and modified date provenance for 767 citation URLs (CSV, one row per citation, with the provenance note for each date).