How we score a trend

Every trend entity is scored on three primary axes:

• Search demand — 12 months of search volume + week-over-week growth on the primary keyword and its top 20 long-tail variants.
• Competitive density — indexed page count, median domain authority of the top 10 results, and SERP feature mix (shopping, video, ads).
• Cross-channel echo — mention velocity on Reddit, YouTube, and Pinterest within rolling 30-day windows.

The headline number weights growth heavily but penalises crowded SERPs. A simplified version of the formula:

score = 0.45 · normalize(growth_12mo)
      + 0.20 · normalize(cross_channel_echo)
      + 0.15 · supply_gap_bonus
      − 0.20 · competition_penalty

Each term is normalised against the vertical's distribution — a +120% growth score means something different in beauty vs. industrial software.

Search and SERP data refresh weekly. Cross-channel echo refreshes daily for entities with a score above 70 and weekly for the rest. AI explanations regenerate when an entity's score moves more than 10 points.

• New entities. Anything younger than 6 weeks has a suppressed score (capped at 65) until we have enough history to detrend noise from signal.
• Brand searches. We exclude obvious brand terms, but ambiguous ones (think product names that became generics) can over-inflate competition.
• Regional skew. Volume is US-weighted. International breakouts may lag in our data by 4–8 weeks.

The score is a starting point, not a verdict. Pair it with the Competition column, the 12-month chart, and your own qualitative read of the niche. Operators who treat TrendWeaver as a shortlist generator and validate manually consistently outperform those who chase the single highest score on the page.