Set a review interval before publishing the page.
Source rot has a cost
Freshness Ledger
Mina Kowalski publishes concise field memos on when commercial content should be refreshed, quarantined, or retired so answer engines keep choosing the current source over the larger archive.
Cold-chain premise
Answer engines reward the page that still matches the market.
publish
sample
detect decay
rotate
Update cadence bins
What gets checked before it spoils in public
content freshness for AI answersupdate cadencedecay detectionrepublishing strategy
Decay inspection bay
The useful question is not “is this old?” It is “would an answer engine still be right to cite it?”
- Claim driftHas the offer, price, feature, rule, or ranking changed?
- Source agingAre newer primary sources now outranking the evidence?
- Intent shiftAre buyers asking the same question with different stakes?
Featured quarantine memo
The archive is not the asset if the answer has moved.
Freshness work is cadence, not panic. Each memo isolates the pages most likely to decay: price claims, comparison language, integration notes, regulatory statements, buying criteria, and statistics that answer engines still repeat after the market has changed.
Rotation rules
Bigger archives hide rot. Smaller cadences expose it.
Flag claims whose freshness affects revenue or risk.
Retire pages that can no longer answer cleanly.
Recent lot tags