Insights · Field note · Growth and AI visibility
Refresh cadence: why 180 days is the outer limit
Every page we publish is reviewed within six months at most, and sooner where the subject moves. The reasoning behind the number.
We set 180 days as the longest interval any published page may go without expert review, and 90 days for pages whose subjects change quickly. The limit is a house rule, not a published study, and it rests on three observations: engines reward currency (Ahrefs measured AI-cited URLs as about 25.7 percent fresher than organic results across 16.975 million citations); regulations, prices and engine behavior change within months; and a review that does not happen on a schedule does not happen. A page nobody has looked at in a year is a page the organization no longer stands behind.
In detail
What the evidence shows.
Why a limit at all
Without a schedule, review happens when someone notices a problem, which is after a client or a regulator noticed it first. A limit makes currency a property of the program rather than a hope. The schedule is generated from each page’s revision date and interval, so nothing depends on memory.
Why 180 and 90
Six months is long enough that most pages need no change and short enough that a wrong page is caught before it does lasting harm. Topics that move faster, such as engine behavior, pricing and current regulation, get 90 days. Pages that earn citations are reviewed first in each cycle because they are the ones a wrong statement would damage most.
What a review is
The expert reads the page and marks it current, revise or retire. Current pages get a new revised date only because a real review occurred. Revised pages go back through verification and sign-off. Retired pages are redirected. The revised date on the page and in the schema then means what it says.
Freshness without pretense
Changing a date without a review is misrepresentation and engines can detect it. The limit exists to make real review routine. A major refresh counts as a page credit in our plans because the work and the value are comparable. See freshness as a citation factor and refresh cycle management.
Sources
Primary references.
- Ahrefs, July 2025. Freshness of AI-cited URLs versus organic results across 16.975 million citations.
- Performance Data editorial standards
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days