{"id":13,"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","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","candid-team"],"topics":["ai-citation","freshness","measurement"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Seer Interactive analyzed 5,000+ AI-cited URLs (October 2025) and found a strong recency bias across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews:\n\n- **65%** of AI bot hits target content published in the **past year**\n- **79%** target content from the **past 2 years**\n- **89%** target content from the **past 3 years**\n- **94%** target content from the **past 5 years**\n- Only **6%** of hits target content **older than 6 years**\n\n**Quote (Seer):** *\"Nearly 65% of log hits were for content published within the past year (2025). 79% of total hits targeted content from the last two years (2024-2025). 89% of hits were on content updated within the last three years (2023-2025). 94% of hits occurred on content published within the last five years (2021-2025). Only 6% of hits were on content older than six years.\"*\n\n**Source:** Seer Interactive, \"Study: AI Brand Visibility and Content Recency,\" October 2025. <https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/study-ai-brand-visibility-and-content-recency>\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Implication for Candid:** A brochure site published once and never updated falls out of the 65% \"fresh\" bucket within 12 months. Database-backed sites (catalogs, KBs) auto-refresh publish/update dates as content changes — they stay in the recency bucket structurally, not through manual effort. See [[rule-publish-and-last-updated-dates-mandatory]].","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[],"incoming":[{"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":"relates-to"},{"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","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"research-brief-structured-content-as-competitive-advantage","title":"Research brief: Structured content as a competitive advantage (piece 2 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"research-brief-marketing-sites-that-do-something","title":"Research brief: What makes a marketing site do something (piece on brochure vs platform)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"sej-892-migrations-523-day-recovery","title":"Search Engine Journal (Jan 2025): 523-day average recovery from domain migration (n=892); 17% never recover by 1,000 days","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"ahrefs-14b-pages-96-55pct-no-traffic","title":"Ahrefs (14B-page study): 96.55% of pages get zero Google traffic — supersedes older 90.63% figure","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":"profound-680m-citations-perplexity-citation-behavior","title":"Profound (Aug 2024-Jun 2025, 680M citations): only 11% domain overlap between ChatGPT and Perplexity; 13.7% between AI Overviews and AI Mode","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":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.524Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T18:57:39.524Z"}