How engines work
Knowledge cutoff
A knowledge cutoff is the date after which a model's training data ends. Anything that changed after that date reaches an answer only if the engine retrieves it live at the time of asking.
In more detail
This is why a brand's pricing or feature set can be described from an old snapshot. The fix is to make the current fact easy to retrieve and well represented in sources engines search.
Guides that cover this
Related terms
Training data
Training data is the body of text a model learned from. It sets the model's default understanding of a category and which brands it associates with what, before any live retrieval happens.
Retrieval-augmented generation
Retrieval-augmented generation is when a model searches for relevant documents and writes its answer from what it finds, rather than from training alone. It is why a page published this week can appear in an answer today.
Content freshness
Content freshness is how recently a page was published or meaningfully updated. Answer engines favour current sources on fast-moving subjects, and a visible update date helps both readers and machines judge it.
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