{"id":48,"slug":"rule-publish-and-last-updated-dates-mandatory","title":"RULE: Every page ships with a publish date and a last-updated date. Refresh quarterly minimum.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["freshness","e-e-a-t","agency-methodology"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** Every Candid Creative content page (blog post, article, case study, KB entry, even service pages where appropriate) ships with both a **`datePublished`** and a **`dateModified`**, both as visible UI and as `Article` / `BlogPosting` schema. Refresh cadence is at minimum quarterly for evergreen pages; at minimum monthly for high-value pages.\n\n**Why:** Two independent datasets confirm a sharp recency bias in AI citation:\n\n- Seer Interactive (Oct 2025): **65%** of AI bot hits target content under 1 year old; 89% under 3 years. See [[seer-content-recency-2025]].\n- Ahrefs (2025, 17M citations): AI-cited content is **25.7%** fresher (publish) and **13.1%** fresher (updated) than traditional organic results. See [[ahrefs-ai-citations-fresher-25-7pct-2025]].\n\nA page published once and never updated falls out of the 65% \"fresh\" bucket within 12 months. The fix isn't cosmetic — `dateModified` updates on CSS changes don't fool the system. Real freshness means real content updates: new data, new examples, new sources, new conclusions.\n\n**How to apply:**\n- Every Markdown / MDX entry has `published:` and `modified:` in frontmatter; both are enforced by Zod schema (or equivalent).\n- The visible page UI shows both dates near the title.\n- A quarterly audit identifies pages with `modified` > 90 days old and either refreshes them or marks them as historical reference.\n- For service / pricing pages, the `modified` updates on real data changes (price changes, scope changes), not on cosmetic edits.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"seer-content-recency-2025","title":"Seer Interactive (Oct 2025): 65% of AI bot hits target content under 1 year old; 89% under 3 years","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"ahrefs-ai-citations-fresher-25-7pct-2025","title":"Ahrefs (2025, 17M citations): AI-cited content is 25.7% fresher than traditional organic results","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-kb-backed-website-methodology","title":"Research brief: The knowledge-base-backed website (piece 3 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"hubspot-vaughan-historical-optimization-106pct","title":"HubSpot (Pamela Vaughan): historical-optimization refresh of old posts lifts organic traffic by avg 106%","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-visible-last-updated-stamp-on-public-artifact","title":"RULE: Every public Candid artifact carries a visible \"last updated\" stamp. Living-document discipline beats one-shot publication.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.667Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.667Z"}