In short
Next Big reads thousands of searches every night. A search gets a page when its rise is measured, its overall interest is rising too, and at least one independent source confirms it. Each page says where the search is heading, and names every source in its Sources section with its own figures. It's a Google Trends alternative with a second opinion: one engine's index can move because of a news story, a bot or a change in how it counts, and independent sources rule that out.
The sources
“In the line” means the source is part of the Next Big Pulse a page charts. “Confirms” means a rise there counts as independent confirmation. Every page shows what the licence allows.
| Source | What it measures | How often | In the line | Confirms | What a page shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google web search | Search interest in the US, Google Trends' weekly 0 to 100 index, five years | Weekly | Yes, the anchor | No: it's the rise being checked | Its share of the line, and its own yearly change |
| YouTube, Google Shopping and Google News search | The same index on Google's other properties | Weekly, when read | Yes | No: same company | Their share of the line |
| Bing searches | Monthly US searches, from Microsoft Advertising | Monthly | Yes | Yes | Named only: its licence doesn't let us print the numbers |
| Wikipedia views | Weekly views of the article that is the thing itself (Wikimedia, CC0) | Weekly | Yes, when the article fits | Yes | Both ends and the change |
| News coverage | Weekly volume of news articles (GDELT) | Weekly | Yes | Yes | Both ends and the change |
| Mastodon | Weekly uses of the hashtag | Weekly | Yes | Yes, with a second social source | Both ends and the change |
| Research papers | Papers a year that mention it (OpenAlex, CC0) | Yearly | No: too coarse for a weekly line | Yes | Both ends and the change |
| Hacker News | Posts and comments a year (Algolia's Hacker News search) | Yearly | No | Yes, with a second social source | Both ends and the change |
| Bluesky | Posts a year | Yearly | No | Yes, with a second social source | Both ends and the change |
| The New York Times and The Guardian | Articles a year | Yearly | No | Yes | Named only: their licences |
| Tranco | A site's popularity rank, for a company or an app | Weekly | No | Yes | Both ends and the change |
What else a trend page shows
- Searches a month, the cost of a click and how hard it is to rank: Google Ads keyword estimates for the US, read through DataForSEO.
- Where it's searched most, what rises alongside it and what people ask: Google Trends and Google's autocomplete.
- What's built around it: App Store apps and GitHub repositories for software, and YouTube videos from the last 30 days.
- Product trends: the product types climbing Amazon's best-seller lists, as counts and ranks, never single listings.
We never publish what people post on social sites.
The Next Big Pulse
Each trend page charts one weekly line of overall interest, the Next Big Pulse, blended from every source above with a weekly or monthly reading for the search:
- Each source becomes a weekly series, sized to its platform where the platform itself grows or shrinks (Wikipedia against all of its views, Bing against a basket of everyday searches).
- A source joins once it has at least 26 weeks, few of them empty, and enough activity to mean something.
- Steadier sources count for more, within limits, so one quiet source can't take over the line.
- The line starts at Google's level and moves each week by the weighted change of every source present. A source joins at the line's level, so a new source never makes it jump.
- The line is scaled so its own busiest week is 100. The figures on a page (3 months, a year, two years) are changes in this line.
Every night we check the method by hiding one source at a time and seeing how well the rest predict it. Each page's Sources section shows what its line is made of. The Pulse in full, with tonight's check.
What a search must pass
- Its rise is measured. Google's weekly index at least doubled over about two years and still sits near its peak. A Breakout badge, a rise from nothing, a one-week burst or a seasonal swing says "new", not how much, so it doesn't count.
- Overall interest is rising too. The Next Big Pulse (below) is up at least 10% over the year. A search that rose on one engine while everything else stayed flat isn't trending.
- Independent sources confirm it. At least one source outside Google rose more than it did for every other search we track there, by more than its own noise. Post counts alone need two social sources rising together.
- It means one thing. A search that could mean several things waits until we know which one people mean.
- It's worth building on. A product, a service or a problem people spend money on. Not a celebrity, a news story or anything adult.
The projection
Each page says where interest is likely to go over the next 12 months. The projection carries the level of the last four weeks forward at the rate the line grew over the last 26 weeks, slowing that rate a little every week, and lays the search's own seasonal pattern on top when it has two years or more. We show it as a band:
- +50% or more: likely to keep rising strongly
- +10% to +50%: likely to keep rising
- -10% to +10%: likely to level off
- below -10%: likely to ease off
A page shows no projection when the rise is too short or too noisy for one to mean anything. Projections are Next Big's forecasts from public search data. They aren't financial, investment, trading or medical advice.
When a page changes or stops
Pages update every night. When a trend stops passing, its page stays up and says so: when it last passed, and why it stopped. A trend we judge to be noise or a duplicate loses its page. The weekly lists are frozen the Monday they're made and never rewritten.
What we don't publish
- Numbers a source's licence doesn't let us print (Bing, The New York Times, The Guardian): we name them only.
- Anything from the accounts and devices we research with, and posts people wrote on social sites.
- Pages about celebrities, news stories or adult topics.
Questions
Write to [email protected]. To cite a page: “Next Big (nextbig.io), search trend, data as of date.”