AI Citations Have a Half-Life. I Tracked Mine for 9 Weeks and Watched Them Decay.

Short summary

Author tracked AI citations from five engines weekly for 9 weeks and found they peak at week 3, then decay to 50% of peak value by weeks 4-5, while Google organic search traffic remained flat. The difference reveals AI engines prioritize content freshness over quality. This means content maintenance cadence matters more than initial optimization, and AI Engine Optimization requires fundamentally different strategies than traditional SEO.

• •AI citations follow a ~4-5 week half-life decay pattern, peaking at week 3 then dropping to 50% of peak
• •Google organic search traffic remained stable during same period, showing different ranking mechanics
• •Content freshness matters more than quality for AI engines; effective strategies differ significantly from traditional SEO

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.