Refreshing your topics
Updated September 11, 2026
Refresh topics sits above the grid. It does not immediately do anything. It asks what the next month should be about, because a refresh that re-runs the same inputs produces the same calendar back.
The sheet is headed What should the next month be about?, with the instruction: "Correct anything here first. The refresh plans from it."
The brief
The three brief cards, editable here, because this is usually why a plan came back wrong.
If the articles are about the wrong business, correct What you do. If they are aimed at the wrong reader, correct Who it's for. If they miss a whole area your competitors cover, add the competitor.
Every article after the refresh is written against the corrected version.
A blog you wish yours looked like
Paste a blog's address and Rankbench reads its index, works out the searches its articles answer, and keeps the ones you could credibly write.
This is the fastest way to widen a narrow plan. A competitor's blog, a publication in your field, or the site whose content you have been quietly envious of all work.
It keeps only what fits your brief, so pointing it at a general news site is not useful.
A topic you want written
Type a search you want an article for, choose the shape, and optionally pin it to a particular day.
This one skips the demand check, and the sheet explains why: you know your market better than a keyword tool does.
Use it for the article you have been meaning to write for a year, for a launch, or for a question customers keep asking that no keyword tool has heard of.
What the refresh does
The footer says it exactly: it re-plans the days nobody has written yet from what you changed. Drafts and published posts stay.
So a refresh is safe. It cannot take away work you have already done, and it cannot unpublish anything. What it changes is the empty future.
When to use it
When the plan is about the wrong things. Fix the brief and refresh, rather than removing bad days one at a time.
When your business changes. A new product line, a new market, a new audience.
When you have named new competitors and want the plan to reflect what they cover.
When the pool has emptied and you would rather not wait for the nightly top-up.
What it is not
It is not a way to get better writing out of the same plan. That is steering a day and Brief & settings.
Where to go next
Where the keywords come from is where you check the refresh produced something better.
Still stuck?
Open Rankbench and the page this article describes — most screens explain themselves as you go.