TopTrendingPeople is built almost entirely on public data. That makes our work easy to check, but it also means our rankings inherit the strengths and blind spots of those sources. This post lists the sources we use, what each is good for and where it falls short. It also explains how editorial review works and how to ask us to fix something. Figures are as of early November 2026.
The sources
Wikipedia page views
Our main signal is how many times a person's English Wikipedia article is read each day. Wikimedia publishes these counts openly, a few hours after each day ends. We use views from readers on desktop and mobile, and leave out traffic that Wikimedia identifies as automated crawlers.
Once a day we collect the latest views for up to 3,000 people. People who appeared in Google Trends in the past 14 days come first, and the remaining slots go to the people with the highest usual readership. Between late September and early November 2026 we stored about 213,000 of these daily readings.
Google Trends
Every 15 minutes we read the public trending-search feeds from Google Trends for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and India. Each trend comes with an approximate traffic figure, shown on our pages as labels such as "200K+ searches". Over the same period we recorded about 4,100 Google Trends readings for people in our catalog.
Wikidata and other reference catalogs
Most of the 57,000-plus people in our catalog were added in bulk from open reference data, chiefly Wikidata, along with the Pantheon dataset, Wikipedia's most-viewed lists and TMDB for film and television. Historical basketball and American football players come from sportsdataverse and nflverse roster data. These sources supply birth dates, countries and occupations where they are known.
Biographies, photos and headlines
- Short biographies are adapted from Wikipedia and Wikidata. Many photos come from Wikimedia Commons, and some profile data and images come from TMDB.
- News headlines come from news APIs and from publishers' public RSS feeds. We show the headline and a short summary, and every link goes to the original publisher. We do not write or edit news stories.
How a new name reaches the site
- A phrase appears in a Google Trends feed.
- We look it up on English Wikipedia. If the article's short description does not describe a person, the phrase is dropped. Events, films, products and sports fixtures are filtered out this way.
- Matching people are added as pending. Pending people do not appear on the public site.
- An editor reviews each pending name and approves or rejects it. Approval also triggers a search for recent headlines about that person.
People added in bulk from reference catalogs skip the pending step, because they come from curated databases rather than live search phrases. We correct those entries as problems are found.
What the data can't tell you
Why someone is trending
Page views and search counts measure attention, not its cause or tone. The same jump can follow an award, a match, an election or an anniversary. We do not label reasons, and we do not guess. Each person's page links to recent headlines so you can read the coverage directly.
The whole world
We count English Wikipedia only, and our Google Trends feeds cover five English-speaking markets. Someone who is a major story in a non-English-speaking country but little read in English may rank lower here than their profile at home would suggest.
What happened this morning
Wikipedia views arrive once a day, after each day is over. Attention that starts this morning shows up first through Google Trends and reaches the Wikipedia part of the score the following day. Charlie Woerner, for example, entered the rankings through Google Trends while we had no recent Wikipedia readings for him.
Everyone, every day
Our daily refresh covers up to 3,000 people, out of a catalog of more than 57,000. Someone outside that group is added to the refresh once they appear in Google Trends. Until then, their figures may be out of date or missing. We also need at least seven days of history before we calculate anyone's usual level.
Perfect matching and labels
- A trending phrase can match the wrong article when people share a name. That is why some pages carry a qualifier, such as John Anderson (singer) or Chris Pappas (American politician). Editorial review is there to catch mismatches.
- Categories such as sports or politics are assigned automatically from short descriptions, so someone with a varied career can land in an unexpected category.
- Country and occupation come from reference data and are often missing. For about 58% of the catalog, we have no country on record.
- Google Trends traffic figures are Google's approximate ranges, not exact counts.
How to request a correction
If you see an outdated description, a wrong photo, a person in the wrong category or a name that doesn't belong, tell us through our contact page. To help us act quickly:
- Include the link to the person's page or the article in question.
- Say what is wrong and, if you can, what it should say.
- For a factual fix, link to a reliable source. If the Wikipedia article itself is wrong, it is worth correcting there too, since our short bios are adapted from it.
If you are featured on the site and would like your page removed, send your request from an email address we can verify. We read every message. You can find more about our approach on the About page.
