Written 14 October 2026.
If you publish a figure, write its period into the sentence that carries it: “UK unemployment was 4.9% in May to July 2026”, not “4.9%” in a table with the date in a caption.
What I measured
On 10 October 2026 I asked ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude and Gemini ten questions about “current” UK figures. 7 of 40 AI answers to “current” UK figure questions didn’t say when the figure was from. All 7 came from Google’s two engines.
In one Google AI Mode answer the unemployment rate was right, 4.9%, but its period (May to July 2026) only appeared in a source snippet, not in the answer. Study and CSV.
A day earlier, on the purple pound: Both AI engines that answered gave £274bn, and neither said it was a 2020 figure. Study and CSV.
How to write it
UK unemployment was 4.9% in May to July 2026.Not a table cell that says “4.9%” with the period in a caption or a footnote underneath.
A figure and its date in one sentence are harder to separate. That’s my reasoning, not something I measured.
What I will not claim
- That dating a figure changes what an engine repeats. I didn’t test that.
- That the undated answers were wrong. In the 10 October run, none of the headline figures was older than the latest official release.
- Anything beyond one day, four engines and ten UK figures.
Related: undated prices in AI answers.
This is hack 2 on the search hacks page.