How do AI search engines handle time-sensitive vs evergreen queries about brands?

The engines behave differently depending on whether the query is asking about something current or something stable. For time-sensitive prompts (‘what is happening at [Company] now,’ ‘the latest news on [Brand],’ anything tied to recent events) the engines lean on retrieval: live web search, news APIs, recently-indexed pages. For evergreen prompts (‘what is [Company]’, ‘who is [Executive],’ background and biographical questions) they lean on the training corpus and Wikipedia. A reputation program has to work both layers. Strong recent earned media moves the time-sensitive answers. Strong Wikipedia, entity infrastructure, and durable owned content move the evergreen answers. Optimizing only one of the two leaves a visible gap in AIQ™ reporting that a CCO eventually has to explain.