GEO courseModule 6 of 10: Content an AI Can UseLesson 6.6
Freshness: Honest Dates, and Advice That Stays Correct
Keeping pages current, showing honest dates, and having a routine for the pages whose facts expire: fees, market figures, tenancy rules, area details, and landlord and seller advice.
Why it matters
AI can quote a 2022 landlord guide about section 21 notices as if it's current, and your name is on it.
The evidence
Evidence: Study
One large vendor study (correlation only) plus Bing's advice to keep content current. Not proven that updating raises citations.
Do this first
Search your site for "section 21", "assured shorthold" and "best and final", and list every page that comes up.
01What it is
A bus timetable stuck at the stop that’s three years old. It looks official, and it sends people to the wrong bus.
Think of it like
Best-before dates in a shop. Nobody expects everything to be brand new, but nobody wants expired stock on the shelf.
02Why it matters
To the people searching
Landlords and sellers act on advice. If they follow out-of-date guidance from your site, or from an AI quoting it, they blame the agent who published it.
buyers
Lose trust when they spot old rules or market claims.
tenants
May be misled about their rights by old renting guides.
sellers
Act on stale fee or process advice.
landlords
Rely on compliance pages and can lose money if they're wrong.
To Google, Bing and AI
Evidence: StudyAn Ahrefs study of about 17 million cited pages (July 2025) found AI assistants cited content about a quarter fresher than ordinary Google results on average, though the average cited page was still nearly three years old, and Google's AI Overviews cited older pages than ChatGPT. That's correlation. Bing recommends keeping content current and using IndexNow when you update. Google's AI guidance doesn't claim a freshness boost. So: fresh isn't a guaranteed advantage, but stale facts are a clear risk.
- How much fresher AI-cited pages were than Google results, on average (Ahrefs, 2025)
- 25.7%How much fresher AI-cited pages were than Google results, on average (Ahrefs, 2025)
An agent example
A branch audits its blog and finds six posts written for the old tenancy system. It deletes two, rewrites three with a new date and a short change note ("11 October 2026: removed guidance on section 21 notices"), and redirects one to a current guide. Each kept post now ends: "Reviewed on [date] by [name]. Rules change: check gov.uk or take advice for your situation."
03Your turn
Check yours, then fix it
- 1List your fees, landlord, tenant, seller and market pages.
- 2Next to each, write the last time a person actually checked the facts, and who.
- 3Mark anything older than a year.
- 1Search your site (site:yourdomain.co.uk) for "section 21", "assured shorthold", "best and final", "offers in excess of", and years like 2022 or 2023.
- 2Review every hit.
- 1In Search Console Performance, check which old pages still get impressions.
- 2Those are the ones people, and AI, can still find.
Here is a page from my estate agency website. List every statement that may go out of date (fees, laws, dates, market figures), and say how often each should be checked. List every legal rule it states so I can verify it against gov.uk. Don't confirm them yourself. [paste page]
- 1Fees and legal pages: every three months, and whenever rules change. Owner: lettings or compliance lead.
- 2Market data: monthly or quarterly. Owner: sales manager.
- 3Area guides: twice a year. Owner: branch manager.
- 4Evergreen guides: once a year.
- 1Show "Last checked" or "Last updated", and only change it when someone really checked or changed the page.
- 2If you check and nothing needs changing, "Checked on [date], no changes" is honest.
- 3Add a short change log to fees and rules pages.
- 4Never edit a date to look current. A false date is a misleading statement.
- 1Link every legal rule to the gov.uk page that sets it.
- 2Say who wrote the page and who checked it.
- 3Avoid "you must" unless the official source says so. Where it depends on someone's situation, say so and invite them to ask.
- 1Remove or redirect pages you can't keep correct.
- 2Ask your web provider to show the updated date in the template and ping IndexNow when you edit.
Then: Put the review dates in a shared calendar now. Freshness fails when it depends on someone remembering.
04Keep it up
Monthly: refresh the oldest three to five key pages. Quarterly: lettings and compliance pages, while the Renters’ Rights Act is still rolling out.
That's lesson 6.6
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