Content Freshness
Search engines and AI answer engines favor content that is current. When an informational blog post goes months without an update, it can slip in search rankings, get cited less often in AI-generated answers and send less referral traffic to your site. Content Freshness finds your outdated informational blog posts and gives each one a refresh with GEO improvements, for example, including the target keyword and a relevant product link, without changing what the meaning of the post. It supports both SEO (ranking in traditional search) and GEO (generative engine optimization: being cited by AI answer engines).
Requirements for using Content Freshness
Content Freshness is currently available to customers who meet all three of the following requirements:
- Website size: Your website has fewer than 10,000 pages.
- Business type: You operate a non-e-commerce business.
- Blog content: Your website includes a blog.
These requirements determine eligibility for Content Freshness. Within an eligible website, suggestions focus on informational blog pages, as described below.
Which pages are the primary focus
Adobe Brand Visibility classifies the pages on your site by search intent so effort goes where it has the most impact. Content Freshness focuses on informational blog pages: posts written to answer a question or explain a topic. These are the pages people and AI answer engines turn to for information, so keeping them current matters for visibility. Product pages, landing pages and utility pages such as author and category listings are not included.
How is an outdated page selected for optimization
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Find the last real update. Adobe Brand Visibility reads multiple “last updated” signals your site publishes to determine the most reliable date:
- Dates on the page itself: structured data (schema.org dateModified), meta tags and visible “Updated on” dates in the body of the post. Dates in sidebars, related-post lists and footers are ignored.
- The Last-Modified date your web server reports.
- The lastmod date in your XML sitemap.
Adobe Brand Visibility uses the most reliable source available. If that source shows more than one date, the oldest one is used, so a minor tweak elsewhere on the page doesn’t hide outdated content. If a page shows only its original publish date, that date is used.
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Ignore site-wide republishes. When most of your site appears to have been updated at once (at least 70% of the pages in your sitemap within the same 30-day window), that usually means a CMS republish or migration rather than real content updates. In that case the server and sitemap dates are set aside, so a bulk republish can’t make outdated pages look fresh.
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Flag outdated pages. A page is considered outdated when its last real update is more than 90 days old. Pages with no date at all are not flagged, unless a site-wide republish erased their dates. Those pages are still flagged so they get reviewed.
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Choose what to refresh. Adobe Brand Visibility refreshes the opening paragraph of the post, which sets the context for readers, search engines and AI answer engines.
What shapes each refresh
- Primary keyword: Adobe Brand Visibility groups your pages into topic clusters based on the searches they serve. The cluster a post belongs to supplies its primary keyword, so the refresh reinforces the topic the page is already relevant for. Brand names (yours or your competitor’s) and low-quality terms are filtered out. If a post doesn’t belong to a topic cluster, it is skipped rather than given a guessed keyword.
- Search intent: on conversion pages, such as product and landing pages, a refreshed opening paragraph is not what moves the needle, so those pages are not refreshed. Content Freshness focuses on informational blog pages instead. There, current content matches what searchers and AI answer engines expect and the added product link guides readers toward the pages that convert.
- Internal product link: Adobe Brand Visibility adds a link from the refreshed paragraph to one of your relevant product or service pages, connecting informational content to the pages that convert. It picks the link based on topic fit first, then business value and search demand, then how naturally the link reads in the sentence. If the paragraph already links to a suitable product page, that link is kept. Each link is labeled relevant or needs review.
What is delivered
A refreshed opening paragraph that keeps your sentences, voice, length, facts and existing links, and adds only the primary keyword and the product link. It follows your brand guidelines when they are provided and language you already use is never treated as a problem.
Every refresh is reviewed automatically before you see it. It must be safe, consistent with the facts in the original, on topic and keep all of your original links. It is also scored on keyword use, writing quality, faithfulness to the original and link fit. A refresh that falls short gets one more attempt. Each suggestion shows:
- A quality tier: Autofix-ready (ready to deploy as is) or Needs review (worth a look before deploying). Refreshes that don’t meet the quality bar are never shown. A suggestion is “Autofix-ready” only when its product link is relevant and it scores at the top on every measure. A suggestion without a product link can reach “Needs review” at most.
- The product link and its label (relevant or needs review).
- The primary keyword and the page’s current search ranking for it.
Suggestions are prioritized by search demand for the topic (highest first), then by time since the last update (oldest first), so your biggest opportunities appear at the top.
Review and deploy
For each suggestion, you can:
- Edit before you deploy: you can adjust the refreshed paragraph before deploying it. Your edit is saved alongside the original suggestion. To protect your site, an edit can contain text and the suggested links only. Deploy stays disabled for an edit that can’t be applied safely, for example when it is too long, contains other formatting, or the suggestion has been regenerated since you made the edit.
- Deploy on AEM as a Cloud Service: both “Autofix-ready” and “Needs review” suggestions can be deployed. Adobe Brand Visibility makes the smallest possible change in AEM, tests it on a copy of your site and confirms the updated text appears on the rendered page before applying it to your live site.
Deploying the optimization
Content Freshness applies approved refreshes directly to your page content in Adobe Experience Manager. It updates the content field that contains the opening paragraph, so the refresh becomes part of your authored content rather than a separate version served at the edge.
Deployment is available only for eligible suggestions on sites configured for Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service deployment. You must have the required permissions to update the affected content.
- Select the suggestions you want to apply.
- Select Deploy optimizations.
- Review the selected updates in the deployment review dialog.
- Select Deploy at source to submit the updates.
Reviewing the changes in AEM
Check the deployment result for each selected suggestion. If a suggestion could not be applied, review the reported reason before trying again. Selecting multiple suggestions does not mean every update was successfully deployed.
After a successful deployment, open the affected page in AEM author. Review the refreshed opening paragraph in the context of the full page, including its wording, keyword use and any product or service link.
Publishing the updated content
When you are satisfied with the refresh, follow your usual AEM review, approval, and publishing workflow.
Until the updated content is published, the refresh remains in the authoring environment. Once published, it becomes part of the public page. Source-content updates are available to both people and AI agents, rather than being limited to AI agents.
Open the public page to confirm that the refreshed paragraph is visible. Search engines and AI answer engines may take time to discover the published update.
Reverting a refresh
Reverting a refresh restores the previous content in AEM author. Review the restored paragraph before publishing it.
If the refresh has already been published, publish the restored content through your usual AEM workflow so the change is also reflected on the live site. Restoring content in author alone does not update the published page.