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 SeoMods score is 13/100, which ranks it 24 of the 25 tools with a published benchmark by median. The ranking runs over the 25 tools on the main benchmark page; 1st is the highest median. The middle half of results falls between 13 and 35 — a band 22 points wide. That is wide: in this sample sites’ scores diverge markedly on this measure.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 5,204 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The distribution banks up against the floor: most scans in this sample score low, so even a middling result sits above the majority of them.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Content Freshness |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 64% · 3,340 |
| 20–39 | 19% · 1,007 |
| 40–59 | 7% · 356 |
| 60–79 | 9% · 444 |
| 80–100 | 1% · 57 |
| Total runs | 5,204 |
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 does my score sit?
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 | P10 | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Freshness | 13 | 13 | 13 | 35 | 56 | 24.4 | 0 | 100 |
A score from the Content Freshness Score can be read against the five values below. All of them are calculated from the scans in this benchmark: they place a SeoMods score within this sample, not in Google’s results.
| Percentile | Score | What it means for a score |
|---|---|---|
| P10 | 13 | About one scan in ten scored 13 or lower. Below it, a page is in the lowest tenth of this sample. |
| P25 | 13 | The edge of the bottom quarter. A score under 13 is below about three quarters of the scans. |
| Median | 13 | The middle of the sample: half the scans scored lower, half higher. A score of 13 is the typical result here. |
| P75 | 35 | Where the top quarter begins. A score of 35 or more is at or above about three quarters of the scans. |
| P90 | 56 | Where the top tenth begins. A score of 56 or more is among the highest 10% of scans in this sample. |
Some of these values coincide. That happens when many scans land on exactly the same score, so the bands between them are not separate bands at all — read the equal values as one step.
Percentiles describe the sites SeoMods scanned, not the whole web, and they apply to this tool only: the same number on another tool sits somewhere else.
The SeoMods checks most often unmet
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 | Not met (share of scans) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| "Updated" freshness language | 97% | Partial |
| Visible date on the page | 92% | Hard fail |
| dateModified in structured data | 87% | Hard fail |
| datePublished present | 86% | Partial |
| References the current year | 76% | Partial |
| No stale year references | 6% | Partial |
| Recently updated (≤12 months) | 2% | Partial |
The rate is the share of scans in which a SeoMods check was not met. It is SeoMods’ criterion, not Google’s assessment of these pages. “Hard fail” means the check’s full weight is deducted from the SeoMods score; “partial” means part of it.
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 90% 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 1.7 of 6 checks and leaves 4.5 open items behind. In this sample what brings a SeoMods score down is mostly not one large omission but accumulated small ones.
Run the Content Freshness Score on your own page
Month by month
This page adds every published month together. Underneath it, each month is frozen as an edition of its own whose figures are never edited again — which is the only reason two months can be set side by side at all. Below is the Content Freshness Score across the 2 published editions, with the combined figure in the last row of the table.
Between August 2026 and September 2026 the median held at 13, and the share of scans at 80 or above held at 1%. The two months do not measure the same sites — the September 2026 sample has about 3 times as many sites — so read the gap as a change in the cross-section measured, not as the same sites getting better or worse.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 13 | baseline | 1% | 4.5 | 1,448 |
| September 2026 | 13 | no change | 1% | 4.4 | 3,756 |
| All published months, combined | 13 | — | 1% | 4.5 | 5,204 |
Reading a monthly difference. Each month is a separate sample, and its size changes from month to month. A change in sample size can move a median and a distribution by itself, so a monthly difference should not be mistaken for a change in scores: it does not show that sites improved or got worse.
Which checks moved
Each check’s rate in the first edition that measured it, beside its rate in the latest. Moves under two points are marked as no change: these are independent monthly samples of a shifting set of sites, and a difference that small is not evidence that anything on the web changed.
| Check | Not met in August 2026 | Not met in September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| References the current year | 79% · August 2026 | 74% · September 2026 | −5 pp |
| Visible date on the page Hard fail | 95% · August 2026 | 91% · September 2026 | −4 pp |
| dateModified in structured data Hard fail | 89% · August 2026 | 86% · September 2026 | −3 pp |
| datePublished present | 89% · August 2026 | 86% · September 2026 | −3 pp |
| Recently updated (≤12 months) | 1% · August 2026 | 3% · September 2026 | no change |
| "Updated" freshness language | 97% · August 2026 | 97% · September 2026 | no change |
| No stale year references | 6% · August 2026 | 6% · September 2026 | no change |
What this score does not measure
- It is not a Google ranking. A high score does not guarantee a better position, and a low one does not mean Google has penalised the page.
- It is not an organic traffic estimate. No click, impression or visit data goes into it.
- It does not represent the whole of the real user experience. What is measured is one URL’s HTML and server response at the moment of the scan.
About this benchmark. This benchmark is calculated from data on the sites SeoMods has scanned. The results do not necessarily represent all websites, or a random selection of them. The scores express SeoMods’ own measurement and scoring criteria; they are not ranking, quality, E-E-A-T or AI visibility scores issued by Google. Sample, anonymization and licence: the full methodology.
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 SeoMods score is 13/100, so scoring 13 sits exactly in the middle of the sample. 35 is the start of the upper quartile and 56 or above is the top 10%; below 13 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 tools with a published benchmark have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing. They place a page among the sites SeoMods scanned; they say nothing about Google rankings.
Is the score from the Content Freshness Score issued by Google?
No. It is a benchmark score calculated against the check list SeoMods defined for this tool. A SeoMods check going unmet does not mean Google has penalised the page or ranked it lower.
Which SeoMods check goes unmet most often on the Content Freshness Score?
“"Updated" freshness language”, which was not met in 97% of scans. The largest losses on the SeoMods score, though, come from the checks scored as hard fails — this tool has 2, the most common being “Visible date on the page” at 92%.
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 October 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/content-freshness-score. If you need to cite by date, use the September 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.