Why it matters.
Freshness is a habit the engines reward. Seer Interactive’s study of 7,683 pages cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity (published 24 July 2026, citations from March to June 2026) found that 75% of the pages LLMs cite had been updated in the last year.
Updating your own page is not enough. An engine assembling an answer may read an old directory profile, a PDF or a two-year-old post, and repeat the figure it finds there.
The 10-minute self-check.
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity: “What results has [company] achieved for its clients?” Then:
- List every number the answers quote.
- Check each against your current site. Mark it current, old or wrong.
- Search Google for each old figure in quotation marks to see where it still lives.
Steps.
- Find every copy: site pages, PDFs, directory profiles, LinkedIn posts, press releases, partner pages.
- Update the canonical page first, with a visible “updated” date and the date range of the result.
- Replace or retire the old copies. For a PDF you cannot edit, publish a new version and redirect the old URL.
- Ask search engines to recrawl the updated pages (URL Inspection in Search Console).
- Re-ask the engines after two to four weeks.
- Put a quarterly proof review in the calendar.
What we saw on prolinkage.com.
How to measure it.
- Current-number rate: share of engine-quoted numbers that match your site, monthly.
- Old copies left: count of live pages still carrying a retired figure.
- Lag: days from your update to the first engine answer that uses the new number.
Sources.
- Seer Interactive, Study: Content Recency’s Impact on AI Visibility in 2026, 24 July 2026.
- Prolinkage AI self-test (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview, one run each), 6 November 2026.
- FullTilt Team Development, Search Console Generative AI features impressions, last 3 months vs previous 3 months (registry FT-04), captured 4 September 2026.
- Prolinkage change ledger, 6 to 8 November 2026.