Flag content becoming stale on evidence — outdated years, unmaintained articles — not age alone.
9 active of 13 published rules · each active rule is versioned and backed by evidence. Planned rules are on the roadmap.
The title, URL or main heading names a year earlier than the current year, which signals dated “best of / guide” content due for a refresh.
What it checks
Compares a year found in the title, URL or H1 against the evaluation year.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
A “best of / top … [year]” style title names a year that is now in the past — a strong recency-claim that has expired.
What it checks
Detects a “best/top … [year]” title pattern and compares the year against the evaluation year.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
An article published two or more years ago with no modification date carries no signal that it has been maintained.
What it checks
Flags article pages published ≥2 years before the evaluation year with no modification date.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
The page states it was last updated two or more years ago.
What it checks
Reads a “last updated / as of” year from the content and compares it to the evaluation year.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
A link that returned a healthy status at the previous scan now returns 4xx/5xx — link rot detected over time.
What it checks
Compares each measured outbound link’s status against its status at the previous scan.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
Fewer internal pages link to this page than at the previous scan — a loss of internal link equity.
What it checks
Compares this page’s inbound internal-link count against the previous scan’s count.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
Wording that implies currency (“currently”, “as of now”) is unchanged since the previous scan, suggesting the claim has gone stale.
What it checks
Compares a signature of the currency-implying sentences against the previous scan.
Confidence
Medium — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
The main content changed since the previous scan, but the declared modification date was not updated — a transparency gap.
What it checks
Compares the main-content hash and the declared modification year against the previous scan.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
Main-content word count dropped more than 20% since the previous scan with no restructuring evidence — possible content loss.
What it checks
Compares main-content word count against the previous scan.
Confidence
High — derived from evidence quality, not asserted.
A citation link backing a numeric/statistical claim (cross-ref EEAT-021) has died since the last scan.
What it checks
Needs the claim→citation mapping tracked across scans on top of the baseline link statuses (DECAY-001).
Status
Published in the catalogue; not yet evaluated by the scanner, so it never produces a finding.
This page’s content hash is unchanged across recent scans while template-siblings were refreshed.
What it checks
Needs multi-scan content-hash history plus template/type clustering of sibling pages.
Status
Published in the catalogue; not yet evaluated by the scanner, so it never produces a finding.
The declared modification date has not moved in over a year while comparable sibling pages were refreshed.
What it checks
Needs baseline dateModified history and template/type clustering of sibling pages.
Status
Published in the catalogue; not yet evaluated by the scanner, so it never produces a finding.
The page now fails a rule it previously passed, though its content hash is unchanged — likely a rule change, not a page change.
What it checks
Needs a stored per-scan, per-rule outcome history to diff pass→fail against content stability.
Status
Published in the catalogue; not yet evaluated by the scanner, so it never produces a finding.