How to Find Outdated Content on Your Website

You have published hundreds of articles over the years. Some are still accurate. Some quote prices that changed twice since. Some explain a setting that no longer exists, or recommend a tool that shut down. The problem is that you don't know which is which, and reading every page one by one is not realistic.

This guide gives you a practical way to find outdated content on your website without rereading everything, and to decide which pages deserve your time first.

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What "outdated" really means

An old article is not automatically an outdated article. A guide written in 2019 about how to write a good headline can still be perfectly useful. A review of a phone published six months ago can already be wrong if the price dropped or a newer model replaced it.

A page is outdated when something in it is no longer true or no longer useful. In practice, it usually falls into one of these categories:

• Outdated facts: prices, statistics, version numbers, release dates, legal thresholds, opening hours.
• Outdated instructions: menus, settings or steps that changed in a newer version of a software or service.
• Discontinued products or tools: recommendations for something that no longer exists or is no longer sold.
• Outdated advice: a practice that experts or official bodies no longer recommend.
• Dated wording: "this year", "the latest version", "recently announced", or a year in the title that has passed.

This distinction matters because it changes how you search. Sorting your articles by publication date only shows you the oldest pages, not the wrong ones. Age is a useful first filter, but the real work is checking what the page says.

We saw this clearly when we ran the same check on our own site and on articles from other sites. Two Spanish-language travel guides written in 2012 mostly described things that had changed since: a museum then under construction has been open since 2014, and the visitor pass they explained how to book is no longer needed. Articles published in 2026, on SEO and on repairing Outlook files, were wrong in a different way: they presented as always true what their sources state with conditions, such as Search Console showing "the exact queries" people type, when Google withholds some of them for privacy. The age of a page tells you what kind of error to look for, not whether there is one. Our data post gives the detail.

Step 1: List every article with its last update date

Start with a complete list of your URLs. You can get it from three places:

• Your XML sitemap. Most CMS and SEO plugins generate one (often at /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml). It usually includes a <lastmod> date for each URL.
• Your CMS. WordPress, Shopify, Ghost and others let you list or export posts with their publication date.
• A crawler. Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs for free and gives you each page's title, status code and word count. Its custom extraction feature can also pull the date shown on the page.

Put everything in a spreadsheet with one row per article: URL, title, publication date, last update date. If you have never done this before, our guide on how to do a manual content audit shows how to build the full grid.

Be careful with update dates. Many sites change the date in the sitemap every time a sidebar or a comment changes, even when the article itself stays the same. Google says it uses the <lastmod> value only if it is "consistently and verifiably accurate" (Google Search Central). Treat these dates as a hint, not as proof that a page was really reviewed.

Step 2: Find the pages losing traffic in Search Console

A drop in clicks is often the first visible symptom of an outdated page: readers and search engines find fresher, more accurate answers elsewhere. Google Search Console shows you exactly where this happens, and it keeps 16 months of performance data (Google), which is enough to compare a period with the same period one year earlier.

1. Open Performance > Search results.
2. Click the date filter, choose Compare, and compare the last 3 months with the same 3 months of the previous year. This avoids confusing a seasonal dip with a real decline.
3. Open the Pages tab and sort by the difference in clicks.
4. Export the list and add the clicks lost to your spreadsheet.

Now combine the two signals. A page that lost clicks and has not been updated in more than 12 months goes to the top of your list. A page that lost clicks but was updated recently may have another problem (competition, search intent, technical issue) and needs a different kind of review.

Keep in mind that for some searches, Google deliberately favors recent content. Its ranking guide describes "query deserves freshness" systems "designed to show fresher content for queries where it would be expected" (Google ranking systems guide). On those topics, an outdated page loses ground faster.

Step 3: Spot the obvious signs of age

Before reading pages in depth, a few quick checks reveal a lot of outdated content in minutes:

• Years in titles and URLs. "Best laptops 2023" is outdated by definition. Search your spreadsheet for past years, or search Google with site:yourdomain.com intitle:2023.
• Time-sensitive words. Search your site for "this year", "currently", "the latest version", "new feature", "coming soon". Each one is a promise that may have expired.
• Version numbers. Tutorials about a specific version of an app, plugin, operating system or API are among the first to go out of date.
• Broken outbound links. A crawler lists the external links that return errors. A dead link often means the source, product or page you cited has changed or disappeared.
• Reader comments. "This doesn't work anymore" or "the option is gone" in the comments is the most honest signal you will get.
• Old screenshots. If the interface in your images no longer matches the real one, the steps described around them probably changed too.

These checks are fast, but they only catch the visible cases. The most damaging outdated content often looks perfectly fine on the surface.

Step 4: Check the facts inside each page

This is the step most audits skip, and the one that matters most. An article can have a current title, working links and a recent date, and still state a price, a statistic or a rule that is no longer true.

For each priority page, go through it and list the claims that can change over time:

• numbers: prices, percentages, statistics, limits, dosages, rates;
• dates: releases, deadlines, the date a law or rule came into force;
• names: products, versions, companies, official bodies, people in a role;
• procedures: steps, menus, settings, requirements;
• recommendations: anything presented as the current best practice or official guidance.

Then check each claim against the primary source: the official documentation, the publisher's pricing page, the government text, the original study. Not another blog that may be just as outdated as yours. Note what changed and the link that proves it. This proof is what lets you correct with confidence, and it makes your update more trustworthy for your readers.

Which pages to update first

You will rarely have time to fix everything at once. Use two questions to sort your list: does the page still matter (traffic, backlinks, conversions), and how wrong is it?

Situation	What to do
Still gets traffic and contains wrong facts	Fix now. Readers are reading wrong information today.
Losing traffic and not updated for a long time	Update soon: check the facts, refresh examples, then update the date.
No traffic, no backlinks, outdated topic	Merge, redirect or delete. See our guide on what to do with an obsolete article.
Old but accurate and still useful	Keep it. Check it again at your next review.

Two more rules help decide between pages of the same group:

• Sensitive topics come first. Health, money, legal and safety content can cause real harm when it is wrong. These pages deserve the shortest review cycle.
• Pages that bring business come next. An outdated comparison or buying guide that sends readers to your product or your affiliate links costs you money and trust every day.

If many of your pages end up in the third row, our guide on what to do with an obsolete article explains how to merge, redirect or remove them safely.

How to find outdated content automatically

Steps 1 to 3 are quick with the right tools. Step 4 is where a manual audit becomes unmanageable: checking every claim of every article against current sources can take weeks on a site with a few hundred posts.

That's the part we built EEATClean for. You enter your website's address, it imports your articles, and for each article you analyze it:

• identifies the claims that can go out of date (versions, prices, dates, procedures, figures);
• researches each one live on the web and compares it with current sources;
• gives you a clear verdict for the article: needs an update, review or remove, or good to keep;
• lists each correction in plain language, with the source that proves it.

It never edits your site. You read the evidence and decide what to change in your CMS. You can also schedule new checks for your most important articles, so you know when one of them goes out of date again.

To see how this compares with doing it by hand, read our EEATClean vs manual content audit comparison.

How often to check for outdated content

Finding outdated content once is useful. Doing it regularly is what keeps your site trustworthy. A simple rhythm that works for most sites:

• Every 1 to 3 months: your top pages by traffic or revenue, and anything on fast-changing topics (software, prices, health, law).
• Every 6 months: the rest of your articles that still get traffic.
• Once a year: a full review of the site, including pages with no traffic, to decide what to merge or remove.

Write down the date of each review and what you changed. It helps you see later whether an update actually brought traffic back, and it gives you a clear history if a reader asks why something changed. Clear, verifiable updates are also part of what makes content trustworthy, as explained in our guide on how to improve your E-E-A-T signals.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if an article is outdated?

An article is outdated when something in it is no longer true or no longer useful: a price, a version number, a statistic, a law, a tool that was discontinued, or a method that no longer works. Age alone is not the test. A five-year-old article can be perfectly accurate, and a six-month-old one can already be wrong.

How often should I check my content for outdated information?

Check the pages that bring you the most traffic or revenue every one to three months, the rest of your active articles every six months, and run a full review of the site once a year. Topics that change fast, such as software, prices, health or law, need the shortest cycle.

Does changing the publication date make content fresh?

No. Google explicitly lists changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh, when the content has not substantially changed, as something to avoid. Update the date only after a real update of the content.

Should I delete outdated content or update it?

Update it if the page still gets traffic, has backlinks or covers a topic your readers still search for. Merge or redirect it if another page already covers the topic better. Delete it only if it has no traffic, no links and no realistic chance of being useful again.

Sources

• Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.
• Google Search Central: A guide to Google Search ranking systems (freshness systems).
• Google Search Central: Build and submit a sitemap (the lastmod element).
• Google Search Central Blog: Introducing the new Search Console (16 months of data).
• Screaming Frog: SEO Spider (free version limited to 500 URLs).