A claim cited by 30 posts decays once at the source and 30 times at the inheritance layer

Compounding gets worse at scale. A claim cited by 30 posts decays once at the source and 30 times at the inheritance layer. When a high-traffic SaaS blog runs 62.5% stale, every backlink into it becomes an indirect citation of a failed claim. We covered the backlink-side mechanics in [our backlink decay benchmark](/blog/backlink-decay-live-benchmark). The source side is simpler: the chart above is the balance sheet the niche has been ignoring.