How to find and refresh decaying content with AI
- Level: Intermediate
- A few hours to set up
The short answer
Compare three months of Search Console data with the same months last year to find pages losing clicks. Give a model each page, its lost queries and the current top results, and ask what is outdated or missing. Update with new facts and examples, then track the queries you targeted.
On this page
At a glance
- The marketing problem
- Pages lose traffic as facts date, competitors publish better answers and search intent shifts. Refreshing a page that already has links and history can be a better use of time than writing a new one, but finding which pages to refresh, and why, takes time.
- Who this is for
- SEO and content teams maintaining a blog or resource library.
What you need
Before you start
- Search Console access with at least a year of data
- Someone who can edit the pages and check facts
- A record of when each page was last updated
What goes in
- Page-level clicks and impressions: the last three months against the same months a year earlier
- The queries each declining page lost clicks on
- The current top results for those queries
How it works
- 01 · ToolFind the declining pages
- 02 · AI stepDiagnose each page
- 03 · AI stepDraft the update plan
- 04 · You decideDecide and verify
- 05 · OutputPublish and track
- Tool
- AI step
- You decide
- Output
Step by step
01 Tool
Find the declining pages
In Search Console’s Pages report, compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier. Sort by the change in clicks and export the pages that lost most, with their queries.
02 AI step
Diagnose each page
Give the model the page, the queries it lost and what ranks now, and ask for a diagnosis before any rewriting.
Prompt to copy
Here is our page, the queries it lost clicks on, and the current top three results for those queries. Tell me: what the top results cover that we do not, which facts or examples on our page look out of date, whether the search intent has changed, and whether the problem looks like content, title and description, or competition from a better page. Quote our page for every point. Our page: [paste] Lost queries: [paste] Top results: [paste]
03 AI step
Draft the update plan
Ask for a plan, not new copy, so the editor decides what changes.
Prompt to copy
Based on the diagnosis, write an update plan: sections to add, sections to cut or rewrite, facts to verify (list each with what to check), a new title and meta description, and internal links to add. Do not write the new copy yet.
04 You decide
Decide and verify
Choose update, merge, redirect or leave for each page. Verify every new fact at its source and add your own examples.
05 Output
Publish and track
Publish the update, note the date, and track clicks for the targeted queries against pages you did not change.
Where a person decides
An editor decides for each page whether to update, merge, redirect or leave it, and approves every factual change.
What to watch for
- Seasonality and site-wide changes look like decay; compare like with like.
- Falling clicks with stable impressions may be a title, snippet or AI Overview issue, not a content one.
- Changing only the date, without real changes, does not help readers.
How to tell it is working
- Clicks for the targeted queries are compared with the period before the refresh and with pages you did not change.
- Facts, screenshots and examples on the page are current.
- Merged or redirected pages no longer compete with each other.
An illustrative example
Input
Illustrative: a two-year-old guide to email deliverability that has lost clicks since new sender rules were introduced.
Output
A diagnosis that the top results now lead with the new sender requirements, which the guide never mentions, and an update plan with a new section, three facts to verify and a revised title.
Want this running in your team?
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