Q: Bumping the publish date vs actually rewriting — which helps a decaying cluster?

Q: Bumping the publish date vs actually rewriting — which helps a decaying cluster?

Short answer: a real content refresh helps; changing the date alone does nothing and can backfire if readers and search notice the content didn't change.

The 'freshness' signal isn't a date field — it's substantive updates: new sub-sections, corrected facts, current examples, added entity coverage. Faking the date without changing the page is a known dark pattern that erodes trust the moment someone spots last year's stats under a today's-date stamp.

In practice: when a cluster page slips, do the work — add the sub-questions that have emerged, update numbers, prune what's stale, strengthen internal links to newer siblings. THEN update the date honestly to reflect the real edit. A genuine 20% rewrite of a page that already ranks beats publishing a brand-new post most of the time. Substance is the signal; the date just records it.

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