Article refreshes

Articles age. Statistics go stale, references drift out of date, and a piece that was accurate when it was written slowly becomes less useful. RankYak counters this by periodically refreshing your published articles: a refresh updates stale facts, outdated statistics, and old references, records the previous version as a revision you may compare and restore, and, if you allow it, republishes the updated article to your site. This page explains when refreshes happen and how to control them.

When articles are refreshed

While planning your content each month, RankYak reviews your published articles and schedules a refresh for those that have become outdated. Refresh items appear on the content plan alongside new articles, marked with a refresh badge, so you may always see which article will be updated and when. Only articles that have been published are considered; drafts are left alone.

Like writing a new article, a refresh or rewrite uses one article credit; see billing for how credits work.

Enabling and disabling refreshes

Refreshing is controlled per project.

1. Go to Settings, then Project.
2. In the Content automation section, toggle Refresh outdated content.

One caution before you enable it: a refresh replaces the article's content with the updated version, so any manual edits you have made to that article are overwritten. The edited version is not lost, however; it remains available as a revision, and you may restore it at any time.

Revisions

Every refresh records the article's previous version as a revision. The revision history, available from the article editor, lists each version with when it was recorded and why, such as a refresh or a manual edit. For any revision you may:

• Compare. The Changes view shows exactly what differs between the revision and the current version of the article.
• Preview. The Preview view renders the revision as a full article.
• Restore. Restoring reverts the article to the selected version. The current version is saved as a new revision first, so a restore can always be undone.

Republishing

A refresh updates the article inside RankYak; whether the update reaches your site depends on the Republish updated content setting in the same Content automation section. When it is enabled, the refreshed article is pushed back through your integration as soon as the refresh completes, so the update goes live without any action from you. When it is disabled, the article shows an Unpublished changes badge in the editor, and you may push the update yourself with the Publish changes button. See publishing articles for how publishing works.