Citation Decay Half-Life
Citation Decay Half-Life is the rate at which a directory listing, map pin, or review profile loses accuracy and authority after it is published, and it reframes local SEO as a maintenance contract rather than a one-time cleanup.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished
What is Citation Decay Half-Life?
“Citation decay half-life → retainer renewal cadence”
Citation Decay Half-Life is the rate at which a directory listing, map pin, or review profile loses accuracy and authority after it is published, and it reframes local SEO as a maintenance contract rather than a one-time cleanup. Agencies that sell a single citation build watch the asset degrade within two to three quarters as hours change, locations close, and aggregator records drift; agencies that price a recurring audit cycle capture the renewal. The decay rate varies by surface: core data aggregators hold longer than niche directories, and Google Business Profile attributes shift fastest. A practical example sits in the AI answer layer, where VisiScan audits whether ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini still recommend a business for buyer-intent questions, a check that only holds for the moment it runs. Forrester's September 2026 finding that 83% of B2C marketers now work with AI agents raises the stakes, because stale listings feed stale answers at machine speed.