Does the AI bot have the latest version of your page?
Freshness answers one question: did the bot read the current version of the page, or an older one? It shows which version of the page a bot last downloaded. It says nothing about what a model will answer.
What you see in the panel
In the Page view the panel gives every bot on one page one of three states: current, older ("N versions back" or "before the measurement"), or no confirmed read. When it cannot tell, it says so instead of guessing. When the versions do not explain a page's responses (a dynamic page is the usual case), the page counts as unstable and gets no calculated freshness. The Pages view shows the same as a bar of bots for every page, and the Freshness view sums it up for the whole site.
For a bot that is behind, the panel shows what changed since its read: how many words you added and removed, and the changed lines themselves, up to 40 lines of 300 characters. The panel sets no threshold for a "minor change".
Where the versions come from
- Response sizes. A 200 answer in the log has the size of the page file, so a change of size means a new version. Sizes that last in time and do not overlap a more frequent size count as versions. A rare size inside the period of another version (a compressed answer, or a markdown twin of the page) is a variant, not a version. A version holds from its first answer to the first answer of the next one.
- Page texts. For a static site with page files in the folder above the app, the app also reads the visible text of your sitemap pages. It reads them one by one within the time budget of a run, and when time runs out the next run starts where the last one stopped. When the text changed but the size did not, the version splits at the time of the file. A new build with the same words adds no new version.
- Reads of a bot. The last read of a page by a bot (an answer 200 or 304) goes to the version with the same size. When the size cannot be matched, it goes to the version in force at the time of the read. Only confirmed visits count and, separately, visits without a list. Unconfirmed visits never count.
- Unstable pages. When the versions explain less than 80% of the answers for a page, the app marks it as not recognisable by size and calculates no freshness for it.
What the app cannot tell you
- Two versions of the same size look identical without page texts. WordPress and other dynamic sites have no page files, so they get only the versions that sizes give.
- A version that existed between two runs has a size from the log but no text. The panel then says that the text of this version was not saved, and from when saving works.
- The history from the log reaches as far as the log does.
- A new version of a page becomes known only at the first response to it, so freshness runs behind your change until a bot or a visitor asks for the page.
- The result means "the latest version this bot fetched", not "this is how much the model knows". A model may also hold data from another bot of the same company, whose visits cannot be confirmed.
- Other domains in the same log have no page texts. Their versions come from sizes only, and the size trace of a domain starts with the run after its sitemap was first downloaded.