Kuroma
Content Freshness
What this check reads on your page
A machine-readable date is looked for first, in this order: article:modified_time, a JSON-LD dateModified, og:updated_time and similar meta tags, then the published equivalents, then any time element with a datetime, and last a date written out in the text, taking the most recent one that is not in the future. The check grades how old that date is, from full credit under thirty days down to a floor past a year, and pays more for a modified date than for a published one. It then looks for the current or previous year in the visible text, ignoring the copyright line, and counts freshness words such as 'updated', 'latest' or 更新, which earn credit only when a date within the last six months backs them up. Text hidden with display:none is not read.
Our verdict on the evidence
Evidence-backed Freshness is the only unanimous causal gatekeeper across engines in the 2026 evidence base, and AI-cited content skews measurably fresher at web scale. Google AI Overviews is the documented exception.
Freshness is the nearest thing to a universal gate in the current evidence base, with Google AI Overviews the documented exception, and AI-cited pages skew measurably newer at web scale. An engine reads the date and not the adjective, so a page that claims to be current without a machine-readable date gains nothing.
What it is worth
19% of AI Readiness, which is 5.7 points of the overall 100.
How audited pages score on it
Based on 30,738 audited pages.
The median page scores 51, and the middle half of pages score between 0 and 62.
- Good (75 to 100)2,644 (9%)
- Moderate (50 to 74)12,907 (42%)
- Needs work (25 to 49)5,005 (16%)
- Critical (0 to 24)10,182 (33%)
49% of audited pages score below 50 on it.
Where it fails most and least
Industries that fail it most
- Retail Tech / POS: 73% of 100 audited pages fail it
- AI / Machine Learning: 72% of 477 audited pages fail it
- Developer Tools / Platforms: 69% of 175 audited pages fail it
- Mental Health / Wellness: 67% of 117 audited pages fail it
- IoT / Connected Devices: 65% of 122 audited pages fail it
Industries that fail it least
- Passenger Transport / Transit: 25% of 138 audited pages fail it
- Construction Tech: 31% of 273 audited pages fail it
- Online Learning / Course Platform: 34% of 228 audited pages fail it
- Banking / Neo-banking: 37% of 363 audited pages fail it
- Energy / CleanTech: 38% of 350 audited pages fail it
How to fix it
- Add article:published_time and article:modified_time meta tags, or dateModified in the page's JSON-LD, and update them when the content changes.
- Show the last-updated date in a time element with a datetime attribute.
- Refresh the facts that carry a year and write the current year into the body, not only the footer copyright.
- Do not write 'updated' or 'latest' on a page whose date is older than six months; refresh the date when you refresh the wording.