For search answers, as soon as the pages the assistant reads are updated and read again, which can be days or weeks. For memory answers, not until a model trained after the change is released, which you do not control. Expect a mix for months: the new words when the assistant searches, the old ones when it remembers.
The mistake is to update the homepage and wait. The homepage is one page. The old description lives on your other pages, your profiles, your partners’ sites and every article written about you. Those are what the assistant reads.
This note gives the order to update things in, how to check which clock an answer is on, and how to keep the old description from coming back.
Why are there two different timelines?
Search reads the web today. Memory remembers the web as it was.
When an assistant searches, it reads pages as they exist now, so the new description can appear as soon as the pages it reads carry it and have been read again. When it answers from memory, it repeats what it learned in training, which stopped at a fixed date. If that date was before your repositioning, the model learned the old version.
You can speed up the first clock. You cannot speed up the second. Our note How long until new content shows up in ChatGPT? gives a test for the first, with a dated log.
The homepage is one page. The old description lives on your other pages, your profiles, your partners’ sites and every article written about you.
What do you update, and in what order?
Start with what you control, then what you can ask for, then what you can only outweigh.
A working order for the first month.
- Your own site. Not just the homepage. Product pages, about, pricing, old blog posts and press releases that describe the old offer. Update them or add a short note at the top saying what changed.
- The one-line description. Write the new description in one or two sentences and use it word for word everywhere.
- Profiles you control. Directories, review sites, LinkedIn, app marketplaces, partner listings you can edit.
- Pages you can ask about. Partners, integrations, roundups and articles that describe you the old way. Send the author the new sentence and a page that shows it.
- New pages that use the new words. Each one is another place the new description lives.
Then submit the changed URLs for crawling in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and make sure the search crawlers can reach them. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
How do you tell which clock an answer is on?
Ask twice, and read the sources.
Ask an assistant to describe your company, and ask a buyer question where you should be named. Do both with web search on and again with it off, or in a temporary chat with personalisation off. Write down the words each answer uses for you.
| With search | From memory | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| New words | New words | Done, for this assistant and model |
| New words | Old words | Pages updated. Memory waits for a newer model |
| Old words | Old words | The pages it reads still carry the old version. Check the citations |
| Old words | New words | Rare. A cited page still carries the old version |
When the search answer uses the old words, the citations usually show which page still carries them. That page goes to the top of the list.
How do you keep the old description from coming back?
Search for the old phrases on a schedule.
List five or six phrases from the old positioning. Each month, search the web for each phrase with your company name, and ask the assistants your buyer questions. Every page that still carries an old phrase is a page to update or a person to email.
Expect a long tail. Old articles stay live for years, and some owners never update them. You will not remove every trace. You can make the new description far more common than the old one, which is what both search and future training will see.
A repositioning is not finished when the homepage changes. It is finished when the web says the new thing more often than the old one.
Questions people ask next
How long does it take ChatGPT to update its description of a company?
With web search on, it can change once the pages it reads are updated and read again. From memory, it changes when a newer model trained after your change is released. There is no fixed timeline for either.
Can I tell ChatGPT we changed our positioning?
Not in a way that changes what it tells other people. The description buyers see comes from the pages it reads and the data it was trained on.
Should we delete old blog posts after a rebrand?
Update them, add a short note on what changed, or redirect them to the current page. Deleting can work too, but a redirect keeps the links others made to you useful.
Why does Gemini use our new description but ChatGPT does not?
Each assistant reads a different set of pages and learned from different training data. One may already read your updated pages while another still relies on memory or older pages.
Can Throughline check how AI assistants describe us after a repositioning?
Yes. Request an AI visibility check. A growth strategist reviews how AI assistants see your company and replies by email within two business days.