Update news pages the day events change, product and pricing pages whenever price or stock changes, local pages when hours or services change, legal and YMYL pages at least every quarter and on every rule change, and evergreen guides once or twice a year. Google does not run a blanket freshness rule: its Search Central documentation says “query deserves freshness” systems show fresher content only “for queries where it would be expected,” and Ahrefs found that Google’s organic results average 1,432 days (3.9 years) since publication across 16.975 million URLs. Cadence should follow how fast the facts on each page move, not a calendar.
Does Google rank fresher content higher?
Only for some queries. Google’s own How Search Works page says that for current news topics “content freshness plays a bigger role than dictionary definitions.” Google’s ranking systems guide lists “freshness systems” next to BERT, RankBrain, passage ranking and the reviews system, and describes them as systems built to show fresher content “for queries where it would be expected,” with a new movie release and a recent earthquake as its examples.
That is a narrow claim. It does not say that a page loses rank because it is old, and the data agrees. Ahrefs studied 2 million random keywords and found that the page in position one was almost three years old on average, the top 10 averaged more than two years, and only 22% of top 10 pages had been created within a year. A separate Ahrefs study of 16.975 million cited URLs measured Google’s organic results at 1,432 days old on average, versus 1,064 days for AI assistant citations. Classic search tolerates old pages far better than AI engines do, which is why this post and our guide to content freshness for AI search give different cadences.
Both Ahrefs studies measure correlation. Neither tested whether updating a page causes a ranking change, and we found no controlled study from Google or anyone else that did.
Not sure which of your pages Google is reading as stale and which are simply old and fine? Run a free audit of your site and see where your content stands in Google and AI answers.
How often should each type of page be updated?
Match the cadence to how fast the underlying facts change. The table below is our recommendation, built from Google’s documentation. Google publishes no schedule for any page type, and the cadences themselves are judgment, not tested thresholds.
| Page type | Update trigger | Cadence | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| News and time-sensitive posts | Events change | Same day, then archive | Update fast or stop updating. Remove the news sitemap tag after 2 days. |
| Product and pricing pages | Price, stock, specs change | On every change | Automate it. Use a Merchant Center feed for volatile data. |
| Local and service pages | Hours, staff, services, address change | On every change, plus a quarterly check | Fix facts immediately. Leave the copy alone otherwise. |
| Legal, medical, financial (YMYL) | Statute, rule, fee or guidance changes | Quarterly review, same day on a law change | Review on a calendar. Update only what changed. |
| Evergreen guides | A fact, tool or screenshot goes out of date | Every 6 to 12 months | Audit once or twice a year. Skip pages that are still accurate. |
| About, team, contact | Staff or contact details change | When facts change | Update on change. Do not refresh to “look active.” |
| Old blog posts with no traffic | Nothing | Annual triage | Update, merge, redirect or leave. Do not mass-refresh. |
The sections below explain the reasoning for each row.
What does Google say about dates and lastmod?
Google asks that dates be honest and visible, and it ignores most of the signals people fiddle with. Four rules come straight from Search Central, and a fifth point covers recrawling.
1. Show a visible date and mark it up
Google’s publication dates guidance says to show a clear date, such as “Last updated: Feb 14, 2018,” and to add datePublished and dateModified to Article markup. It also says dates must describe the publication or update of the page, “not the stories or events described therein.” Do not set future dates.
2. Keep sitemap lastmod accurate
Google states it uses lastmod “if it’s consistently and verifiably” accurate, and that the value should reflect the last significant update to main content, structured data or links. Copyright-year changes do not count. We cover the file itself in how to submit a sitemap to Google.
3. Ignore changefreq and priority
The sitemap documentation says plainly: “Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq> values.” Setting a sitemap to “daily” does not make Googlebot come daily.
4. Do not fake it
Google’s helpful content guidance lists a question to ask about your own pages: “Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?” That is a red flag in Google’s documentation, not a tactic.
The practical meaning: change the date only when the content changed, and let lastmod and dateModified follow the same rule.
5. Expect Google to recrawl on its own schedule
Faster than most sites need, and not on a schedule you control. Google’s crawl budget documentation says its systems “recrawl documents frequently enough to pick up any changes,” that popular URLs “tend to be crawled more often to keep them fresher,” and that crawl budget guidance matters only for sites with roughly 1 million or more unique pages changing weekly, or 10,000 or more changing daily. Google calls those “rough estimates,” not thresholds. A small business, law firm or clinic site is below them.
The one lever Google gives you is Search Console. Its documentation for product pages says it “may take several days after publishing a page for Google to find and crawl it,” and tells you to ask for a recrawl in Search Console when you want a fast refresh. Accurate lastmod values help Google prioritize the pages that changed.
This means update frequency is not limited by Google’s crawler on a normal site. The limit is your content process. For the AI crawler side of this question, see our separate post on how often AI engines recrawl your site.
How should news, product and local pages be handled?
These three page types are where freshness is a real, documented requirement.
News and time-sensitive pages
Google’s news sitemap documentation tells publishers to “only include recent URLs for articles that were created in the last two days,” allows up to 1,000 news:news tags per sitemap, and says the date must be the original publication time, not the time you added the URL. News is the clearest case of a freshness system at work: speed to publish matters, then the story ages out. After the news cycle ends, stop updating. An old event post that reads as current confuses users and Google.
Product and pricing pages
Google’s merchant listing documentation warns that dynamically generated markup “can make Shopping crawls less frequent and less reliable, which can be an issue for fast-changing content like product availability and price.” It recommends a Merchant Center feed for volatile data. It also says Google “may attempt to verify merchant listing product data” before showing it, so a price in markup that differs from the page is a risk. Update price and stock the moment they change, and automate it.
Local and service pages
Google’s Business Profile help says “businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results,” and names hours, including special holiday hours, as data to keep correct. Local ranking rests on relevance, distance and prominence, none of which is a freshness score. So the cadence is simple: fix wrong facts immediately and do not rewrite service page copy for the sake of it. Our breakdown of Google Business Profile ranking factors covers the profile side.
How often should legal and YMYL pages be updated?
At least quarterly, and the same day a law, fee schedule or regulation changes. Google’s helpful content guidance defines YMYL as topics that “could significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people,” and says that for those topics content must be “highly accurate and consistent with established expert consensus.” Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines apply the same standard through trust: an out-of-date legal or medical page fails the accuracy test regardless of its age.
Note the limit of what is documented. Google publishes no minimum update interval for YMYL pages, and the rater guidelines are instructions for human evaluators, not a description of a ranking formula. Our quarterly cadence is a risk judgment: statutes, filing fees, court deadlines and clinical guidance change, and a wrong detail costs readers more than a wrong detail on a recipe page.
For law firms, a practical routine is to date-stamp each practice area page, assign a reviewing attorney, and re-verify citations to statutes and fee figures every quarter. Update the visible date and dateModified only when something in the text changed. The same discipline applies to surgeons and financial advisors, where the update is a fact check, not a rewrite.
How often should evergreen content be updated?
Once or twice a year, and only if something is actually out of date. Evergreen guides, definitions and how-to pages earn their rankings by being accurate for years, and the Ahrefs data on 2-plus-year-old top results supports leaving working pages alone. Google applies freshness only where it “would be expected,” and a page on how a mortgage amortizes or how to file a form does not belong to that group.
A useful six-month audit asks four questions per page:
- Is every number still current, and does it name its source?
- Do tools, prices, screenshots and links still work?
- Has Google’s top result for the query changed in format or depth?
- Did traffic or impressions in Search Console fall for the page’s main query?
If all four answers are fine, do nothing. If one fails, fix that item and update the date. The cost of an unneeded rewrite is real: you can remove the passages that earned the ranking. If you want a calendar for the whole library, build the calendar by page type, and expect AI visibility cadences to run shorter than the classic-search cadences here.
What should you not update? Skip pages where the facts have not changed and the page performs. Three habits waste time or cause harm.
- Date-only refreshes. Google’s guidance flags it, and it adds no information for the reader.
- Mass republishing for “activity.” Google does not use posting frequency as a ranking factor in anything we found in its documentation. Publish when you have something accurate to say.
- Rewriting pages that rank. Ahrefs reports position-one pages are almost three years old on average. A page that ranks and converts has earned the right to be left alone. Change the facts that moved and stop.
Frequently asked questions
Does updating old content improve Google rankings? Sometimes, but Google does not promise it. Its freshness systems apply to queries where fresher content “would be expected,” such as news or new releases. For most evergreen queries, correct information matters more than recent dates. No controlled study we found proves that updating a page causes a ranking change.
How often should a small business update its website? Update facts the day they change: hours, prices, staff, services and contact details. Review service and evergreen pages once or twice a year. A small site does not need a posting schedule. Google’s crawl guidance says crawl budget matters only for very large sites, so frequency is limited by your process, not the crawler.
Should I change the date when I update a page?
Only when the content changed in a way a reader would notice. Google tells site owners to show a visible date, use dateModified, and keep sitemap lastmod verifiably accurate. It also lists changing dates “to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed” as a question to ask yourself.
Does a blog need new posts every week? No. We found no Google statement that posting frequency is a ranking factor. Publish when you have something accurate and useful to add. A site with twenty strong pages that are checked twice a year serves readers better than one with a weekly post that repeats what is already ranking.
Do changefreq and priority in my sitemap matter?
No. Google’s documentation says it ignores both values. What it uses is lastmod, and only when it is consistently and verifiably accurate. If every URL claims to have changed today, you teach Google to distrust the value. Set lastmod to the date of the last significant change and leave the other tags out.
How often should legal and medical pages be reviewed? At least quarterly, plus immediately when a statute, fee or guideline changes. Google treats these as YMYL topics and expects content to match expert consensus. It publishes no required interval, so the quarterly cadence is our judgment. Assign an owner, log each review, and change the date only when the text changed.
The short version
How often you update website content depends on what the page promises. Pages that promise a current fact, such as news, prices, hours and the law, need updates the moment the fact changes. Pages that promise a durable explanation need a check once or twice a year and a rewrite only when something is wrong. Google’s own documents support that split: freshness systems apply where it “would be expected,” lastmod counts only when accurate, and faking a date is flagged as a problem. Stop updating on a schedule and start updating on a trigger. Curious how your current pages read to Google and to AI answers today? See where you stand with a free audit.
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