refreshing-stale-contentlisted

# Refreshing Stale Content ## Overview Content decay is no longer a back-burner problem. The competitive-topic half-life collapsed from 12–18 months to **3–6 months** [1] (see also `finding-underserved-keywords/SOURCES.md` [7]). Plateaus arrive faster, decay starts sooner, and refresh now beats new content for any page that has accumulated link equity. Refreshing what is already live brings 3–5× more return than writing from scratch — you keep the URL, the backlinks, the index history, and the brand trust [2]. This skill is the **Mature-phase decay defense** workflow. It pairs with `gsc-mcp` to detect impression decay automatically, then opens a single, focused refresh PR per affected page. **Core principle:** preserve the URL, change the substance. ## The Detection Signals A page is a refresh candidate when **any** of the following fire: | Signal | Threshold | Why it matters | |---|---|---| | GSC impressions YoY | **down >20%** sustained 4–8 weeks | Canonical decay signal [3] | | Impressions falling faster than clicks | impressions −40% / clicks −20% | Early-stage decay; Google is showing the page less often [3] | | Position drift on stable queries | **3+ spots down** | SERP is reordering around fresher entrants | | CTR rot (position flat) | CTR down ≥25% | Snippet/title aging — title rewrite alone may suffice | | LLM citation drop | when geo-check MCP available | AI engines re-rank citations within ~14 days; ChatGPT cites pages updated <30d ago at 76.4%, Perplexity a