This is the lowest-effort, most-skipped signal in the whole dataset. Not writing a date is not a decision anyone makes; it is a decision nobody makes, and the scores here are the consequence. A date costs nothing, changes no design, and is the first thing both a cautious reader and a cautious model look for before trusting a claim about anything that could have changed.
Here is where that sits. The median is 13/100, which ranks it 24 of the 25 measures in this dataset. The middle half of results falls between 13 and 35 — a band 22 points wide. That is wide: sites genuinely diverge here, which is to say getting ahead is still possible.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 1,448 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The distribution banks up against the floor: most pages score badly, so even a modest result here puts you ahead of the majority.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Content Freshness |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 67% · 977 |
| 20–39 | 19% · 282 |
| 40–59 | 7% · 101 |
| 60–79 | 5% · 79 |
| 80–100 | 1% · 9 |
| Total runs | 1,448 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where your score stands
A low score here almost never reflects stale content — it reflects undated content. Those are very different problems and only one of them is expensive to fix. Check whether your pages carry a visible date and a structured one before concluding that anything needs rewriting; a great deal of perfectly current content is scoring badly for want of a line in a template.
| Tool | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Freshness | 13 | 13 | 13 | 35 | 50 | 22.4 | 0 | 100 |
How to read it: 13 is bottom-quartile, 13 is a typical page, 35 starts the upper quartile and 50 or above is the top 10%. These thresholds apply to this tool only.
The checks that fail most
The checks want the date in three places, because three different consumers look in three different places. A visible date on the page is for the reader. datePublished and dateModified in structured data are for the crawler. Language in the text itself — "updated in", "as of" — is what a language model picks up when it has neither of the other two.
| Check | Did not pass | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| "Updated" freshness language | 97% | Partial |
| Visible date on the page | 95% | Hard fail |
| dateModified in structured data | 89% | Hard fail |
| datePublished present | 89% | Partial |
| References the current year | 79% | Partial |
| No stale year references | 6% | Partial |
| Recently updated (≤12 months) | 1% | Partial |
“Hard fail” means the check’s full weighting is lost; “partial” means only part of the score is. Rates are the share of scans in which the check ran and did not pass.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Date Signals” was the weakest area in 91% of scans.
What to fix first
Put a visible date on the page and the matching dateModified in your structured data, and make sure the template updates the second when the first changes. Then stop bumping the date on pages you have not actually edited: an update date that moves without the content moving is a signal that stops meaning anything the moment anyone checks.
A typical scan passes 1.6 of 6 checks and leaves 4.5 open items behind. What drags a score down is usually not one catastrophe but accumulated small omissions.
Run the Content Freshness Score on your own page
Month by month
The figures on this page are replaced at every refresh. At the end of each month a permanent edition is published for that month and never edited again — which is the only reason this series can be compared at all. One edition has been published so far; when the second lands this section will set the two months side by side.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 13 | baseline | 1% | 4.5 | 1,448 |
Frequently asked questions
Does updating the date improve rankings?
Not on its own, and changing dates without changing content is a well-known and easily detected pattern. What genuinely helps is being able to demonstrate the page is maintained: a real update date, matched by real changes, on a page that would otherwise be assumed to have decayed. The date is evidence of the work, not a substitute for it.
Should every page show a date?
Nearly every page benefits, but the value varies with the subject. Anything about tools, prices, versions, regulations or best practice should be dated prominently, because a reader cannot judge it otherwise. Timeless reference pages need it less, though even there a date signals that somebody is still looking after the page.
What is the difference between published and modified dates?
Published is when the page first appeared; modified is when it last genuinely changed. Both are useful and they answer different questions — one establishes precedence, the other establishes maintenance. Carrying only a published date on a page you have revised several times understates the work; carrying only a modified date hides how long you have covered the subject.
What is a good score on the Content Freshness Score?
In this dataset the median is 13/100, so scoring 13 puts you exactly in the middle. 35 is the start of the upper quartile and 50 or above is the top 10%; below 13 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 measures in this dataset have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing.
Which check fails most often on the Content Freshness Score?
“"Updated" freshness language”, which did not pass in 97% of scans. The costliest failures, though, are the ones scored as hard fails — this tool has 2, the most common being “Visible date on the page” at 95%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — Content Freshness Score benchmarks, 2 September 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/content-freshness-score. If you need to cite by date, use the August 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.