NOVEMBER 5, 2025 — Semrush included our content regency research in recent blogs on content optimization and how to rank in AI search. It's exciting to see the SEO and marketing communities tracking the impacts of AI in real time as we are.
We analyzed 5k+ URLs and found that nearly 65% of AI bot hits targeted recent content (i.e. pages published within the past year), while 89% of hits were on content updated within the last three years (2023-2025). Then we took it a step further, looking at different industries — and found that content regency did in fact carry different weight across industries. Financial Services showed a large bias toward fresh content, while Travel and Energy showed less extreme results.
Our findings align with research from Ahrefs that shows a clear preference among AI assistants for fresher content. Interestingly, our analysis also reveals this is not a one-size-fits-all approach: different industries show distinct patterns in how content age flows back to LLM visibility.
Across both AI bot crawl behavior and citation data, one thing is clear: recent content consistently garners more attention. Our research also reinforces that content strategy should be tailored to your vertical. LLMs view Financial Services content as something that can go stale quite quickly, while an industry like Energy has more evergreen content that LLMs may treat as valuable for a longer time frame.
Our research also revealed differences in content regency across AI models: "In our log file analysis, nearly 90% of AI bot hits occurred on content from the last three years. Similarly, citation patterns from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AIOs show a strong bias toward content published between 2023–2025. "
Check out the Semrush blog on ranking in AI search: How to Rank in AI Search in 2025: 6 Tactics From Industry Experts
Read the Semrush blog on optimizing content: Content Optimization: 15 Tactics to Boost SEO & AI Visibility
Review our original research: Study: AI Brand Visibility and Content Regency
This study was also cited by Position Digital: 90+ AI SEO Statistics for 2025