This page documents how the numbers on our Trends pages are produced. This methodology applies only to ForgeRank's Trends product: it is not search volume and not keyword demand, and none of the counts below should be read as either. If you came for findings rather than method, start with what 29 scored drafts revealed.
Trends pages are easy to fake. You can hardcode a list of "hot topics" with invented volumes and nobody will check, right up until they do. We decided early that our Trends page would only show what we can actually verify, and every row is labeled with where it came from. The breakdown follows.
Every badge says where the number came from
Every topic card carries one of three badges, so you always know what you're looking at:
- REAL DATA: a real count pulled from a live public source at refresh time.
- NEWS-BASED: a real headline used as a topic signal. The "platform fit" is our suggestion, not a metric.
- AI IDEA: a directional suggestion with no numerical claim.
REAL DATA Google, Reddit, YouTube
These platforms expose public feeds, so we read them directly at each refresh (every 6 hours):
- Google: live trending searches from Google Trends (US) via its public RSS feed, with Google's own traffic estimates (e.g. "1000+ searches").
- Reddit: live titles from niche subreddits (Fitness, Cooking, personalfinance, …) with their actual upvote counts at fetch time. When Reddit blocks our server's IP (403), we fall back to clearly-labeled AI-suggested topics.
- YouTube: live video searches by topic with real view counts. This one needs an API key, and when the daily quota is exhausted we fall back to clearly-labeled AI-suggested topics.
For these rows, the numbers you see are the numbers the source reported. Nothing rounded for effect, nothing extrapolated.
NEWS-BASED X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
These platforms have no public trend API. Pretending we have their internal trend data would be fiction, so we don't.
Instead we pull real headlines from Google News and use them as the topic pool. The topics are real and current. The "platform fit" is a suggestion about which platform a creator might adapt that topic for. That is also why these rows show no volume numbers. There is no honest number to show.
AI IDEA The honest fallback
When no live or news signal is available for a topic, an AI model suggests directional ideas. These rows only say whether interest looks rising, steady, or falling: a direction, never a fabricated figure.
Refresh cycle & honesty rules
- The whole list refreshes every 6 hours, and each card shows the data as of the last refresh.
- REAL DATA rows show only real counts. AI rows show only a direction. There is no invented number anywhere on the page.
- If a live source is down at refresh time, we keep the previous verified snapshot rather than guessing.
From trend to finished content in one click
Click Create on any topic and it flows straight into the workspace with the platform pre-selected. The workspace even surfaces the same live trends in its empty state, so you can go from "no idea" to a scored, publish-ready draft without leaving the app.