# Structured data that never goes stale.

**Auto-pilot freshness** — MetaPilot watches every page for changes and regenerates its metadata automatically, so your JSON-LD keeps telling the truth long after you've moved on.

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## TL;DR

Structured data goes stale the day the content changes and nothing tells the metadata. Auto-pilot re-checks your pages every night, reading the `lastmod` in your sitemap and then sending a conditional GET, so it can tell a real content change from noise and regenerate only the pages that actually moved. Origins that report neither are refreshed on a cadence floor instead, so nothing stays stale forever.

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## The problem

You ship structured data once. Then the content changes and the metadata does not. Six months later your JSON-LD is quietly describing a page that no longer exists — and structured data that contradicts the page it is on is worse than none at all.

Doing regeneration by hand across hundreds of URLs is not realistic, and the naive fix (re-generate everything on a timer) burns budget on pages nobody touched. What you actually want is **content-change detection** good enough to tell the difference.

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## How it works

1. **Nightly re-fetch** — Every night MetaPilot pulls your sitemap and lines up every page you have put on auto-pilot.
2. **Three-tier change detection** — First it checks whether the sitemap's `lastmod` advanced. If the sitemap is silent, it sends a conditional GET — `If-None-Match` and `If-Modified-Since` — and reads the answer. A `304` means nothing changed and costs almost nothing.
3. **Auto-regenerate what really moved** — Changed pages get fresh metadata generated and published through whichever channel you run on: injected at the edge on Cloudflare, written into the pages the platform serves on Shopify and Wix.

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## What you get

- **Automatic metadata refresh, set once** — Flip auto-pilot on per page and MetaPilot keeps that page's metadata current for you, on its own schedule, whatever your site runs on.
- **Real content-change detection, not guesswork** — On a `200`, MetaPilot walks an **ETag → Last-Modified → Content-Length** ladder against what the server reported last time (RFC 7232 cache validation, not a crude re-hash).
- **Regeneration only when it matters** — A page that has not moved does not trigger a regeneration. A `304` ends the check; the AI is spent on stale JSON-LD, not on noise.
- **A floor for silent servers** — Some origins expose no ETag, no `Last-Modified`, and never advance `lastmod`. A cadence floor refreshes those pages after 14 days, so nothing goes stale forever.
- **Freshness that actually does something** — A detected change also rebuilds your managed `llms.txt` and `llms-full.txt`, so the map you hand AI assistants describes the site you have now.
- **Optional safety net** — Pair auto-pilot with side-by-side review and changes are proposed instead of published — you approve before anything reaches your live pages.

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## Plan availability

Auto-pilot is on **every paid plan**. Your plan is priced on **pages under management**, and it includes **that same number of regenerations every month** — 500 pages, 500 regenerations. No per-regeneration charge; a busy month costs the same as a quiet one.

Free plans have no regenerations, so auto-pilot requires a paid plan to re-run.

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## Frequently asked

**Will it regenerate pages that did not change?**
No. The detection ladder has to confirm a genuine change first — an advanced `lastmod`, or a conditional GET returning `200` with a different ETag, a newer `Last-Modified`, or a different `Content-Length`. A `304` ends the check at no cost.

**What if my server sends no ETag or Last-Modified?**
A cadence floor takes over: the page is refreshed after 14 days regardless. Stale-forever is not an option.

**Do updates go live automatically?**
Your choice. Auto-publish, or route every change through the approval queue and review the before-and-after before anything ships.

**How often does it check?**
Nightly. The sitemap is refreshed first, then auto-pilot runs against it, so a change is picked up on the next cycle.

**Why does freshness matter so much?**
Stale JSON-LD tells search engines and answer engines something about the page that is no longer true — Google's guidance is explicit that structured data must match the page it describes. Ahrefs found pages cited by AI assistants average 1,064 days old vs. 1,432 for Google organic (July 2025, 17M citations). Metadata that matches your live page is table stakes for both.

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## Keep reading

- Guide: turn on auto-pilot
- What gets refreshed: AI structured data
- Review changes before they publish