{"id":1800,"slug":"capability-live-frequently-updated-data","title":"Capability 3 — live or frequently-updated data: content whose value depends on currency (availability, pricing, status, hours, inventory) refreshed on a cadence rather than written once","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["freshness","customer-facing-tools","working-surface-capabilities","freshness-and-ai-citation"],"reference_body":"**Capability:** Content whose value depends on currency — availability, pricing, status, hours, inventory, anything time-sensitive — refreshed on a cadence rather than written once.\n\n**The defining test:** if the content went stale, customer trust would erode within days or weeks (not months / years).\n\n**Source:** Industry-consensus definitional framing.\n\n**Confidence:** Industry-consensus (definitional).\n\n**Evidence support:** freshness is an independently-corroborated AI-citation signal — Ahrefs ([[ahrefs-ai-cited-urls-1064-vs-1432-days-fresher]]), BrightEdge ([[brightedge-pages-60-days-1-9x-ai-answers-2026]]), AirOps ([[airops-90-day-stale-3x-lose-ai-citations-2026]]), Amsive ([[amsive-50-percent-ai-cited-under-13-weeks-2026]]). It is also a conditional ranking factor in conventional search via Google's \"Query Deserves Freshness\" behaviour ([[google-qdf-freshness-conditional-ranking-factor]]).\n\n**Business types most served:** trades (live availability), restaurants / venues (hours, capacity), retail (inventory), professional services with status-tracking (case progress, ticket status).\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** This capability is the natural pair to [[capability-account-state]] — frequently both run on the same underlying record system. See [[rule-keep-frequently-updated-content-fresh-substantively-not-cosmetically]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"capability-account-state","title":"Capability 4 — account / state: the site remembers who the visitor is and what they have done (login, saved items, order history, progress) so returning visitors resume rather than restart","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"ahrefs-ai-cited-urls-1064-vs-1432-days-fresher","title":"Ahrefs (16.975M citations across 7 AI platforms) — average age of AI-cited URLs 1,064 days vs 1,432 days for organic top-10: 25.7% \"fresher\"","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"airops-90-day-stale-3x-lose-ai-citations-2026","title":"AirOps — pages not updated in 90+ days are ~3× more likely to lose AI citations (2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"brightedge-pages-60-days-1-9x-ai-answers-2026","title":"BrightEdge — pages updated within 60 days are ~1.9× more likely to appear in AI answers (2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"google-qdf-freshness-conditional-ranking-factor","title":"Google \"Query Deserves Freshness\" + 2024 leaked Content API documentation — recency is a CONDITIONAL ranking factor (strongest for time-sensitive queries; substantive updates only)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-website-as-working-surface-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"capability-structured-queryable-data","title":"Capability 1 — structured, queryable data: content stored as records with fields, types and relationships so it can be filtered, sorted, searched, and assembled on demand","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"capability-interactive-functionality","title":"Capability 2 — interactive functionality: the visitor supplies input and the site returns a computed or looked-up result (calculator, quote, search, booking, configurator)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"working-surface-boundary-static-page-with-contact-form-does-not-qualify","title":"Boundary: a static page with a contact form (or \"occasional email trigger\") exhibits NONE of the four working-surface capabilities","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"quarantine-google-53-percent-mobile-3s-abandon-2017","title":"QUARANTINE — \"53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes >3 seconds to load\" traces to Google \"Need for Mobile Speed\" 2016–2017; the data was about MOBILE AD LANDING PAGES, not general business websites","kind":"research-notes","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-most-businesses-need-at-least-one-of-four-not-all-four","title":"R1 — Most businesses benefit from AT LEAST ONE of the four working-surface capabilities, NOT all four; match the capability to acquisition / service mode","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-keep-frequently-updated-content-fresh-substantively-not-cosmetically","title":"R4 — Keep frequently-updated content fresh SUBSTANTIVELY, not cosmetically; cadence at least every 60–90 days for the pages that matter","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-match-capability-to-business-type","title":"R7 — Match the working-surface capability to the business type: booking + live availability for trades, calculator / assessment for consulting, queryable products + account for retail","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.623Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.623Z"}