VercatusFreshness answer engines
Across 16.975 million cited URLs (Ahrefs Brand Radar, 2025), URLs cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot averaged 1,064 days since first seen versus 1,432 days for organic Google results (25.7% fresher) and 909 versus 1,047 days since last update (13.1%); ChatGPT citations were 458 days newer than organic results, while Google AI Overviews cited content 16 days older. The study did not separate time-sensitive queries, and cited URLs were still 2.9 years old on average. Google recommends a prominent, labelled visible date plus datePublished/dateModified that match it.
Sources
- 1Ahrefs · 2025New study: AI assistants prefer to cite fresher content (17 million citations analyzed)ahrefs.com
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CGrade C: reputable industry data or observation. A grade describes the provenance of the sources above; it is not a probability that a change will work. The effect basis says how the size of the effect is known: measured by a study, taken from an industry report, only documented without a size, or not quantified.
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