Monitor trends
Explore trends, follow the topics you care about, and set smart alerts to catch stories before they peak.
Monitor trends
EarlyForge is built to surface stories before they peak. In this tutorial you set up a complete monitoring workflow: explore the trend feed, follow the topics that matter to you, and configure smart alerts so the right signals reach you the moment they cross a threshold.
Prerequisites: An EarlyForge account. Browsing and following trends are available on every plan. How many trends you can open in detail each day depends on your plan (see the note below). Smart alerts are available on paid plans.
Explore the Trends page
Open Trends in the sidebar. You will see a live feed of detected topics gathered from across the web. Each card shows:
- Title — the topic, with its origin country and language.
- Score (0-100) — a composite signal strength.
- Lifecycle stage —
emerging,trending,peaking,saturating, ordeclining. - Source count — how many distinct sources are reporting it.
Trends scoring above 70 with an emerging or trending stage are the signals worth catching early — they have momentum but have not yet crested.
Filter and sort
Use the controls at the top of the page to focus the feed:
- Category — Technology, AI, Business, Health, Science, Crypto, Sports, Politics, Culture, Environment, and more.
- Language — filter by any of EarlyForge's supported languages.
- Sort by — overall score, velocity (fastest-moving), recency (newest), or diversity (widest cross-source coverage).
Trends are global — there is no per-country cap. Sorting by velocity within a category is the fastest way to spot stories gaining traction before everyone else does.
A topic that is emerging in one region but already peaking in another often signals a story about to break globally. EarlyForge clusters these related signals into a single global story for you — see the last step.
Understand the score
Each trend's score is built from five factors:
| Factor | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Velocity | How fast the topic is accelerating. Rapidly rising signals score higher. |
| Diversity | How broadly it is covered across independent sources. Many sources beat a single one. |
| Recency | How fresh the signals are. Newer activity gets a boost; older activity decays. |
| Cohesion | How tightly the sources relate. Higher when they cover the same specific angle. |
| SEO potential | Search opportunity based on keyword demand and competition. |
All sources are weighted equally, so the score reflects genuine cross-source momentum rather than one loud outlet.
Open a trend for detail
Click a trend card to open its detail view, where you can see:
- Score chart — how the score has evolved over time.
- Lifecycle stage — with guidance on coverage timing.
- Source breakdown — the sources reporting it and their contributions.
- Volume history — total mentions over time.
Use this to confirm a topic is genuinely accelerating before you commit editorial effort — or before you turn it into an article.
Trends unlocked per day is your main plan limit: Free 20, Starter 200, Pro 500, Scale and Enterprise unlimited. Trends beyond your daily quota still appear in the lists but are blurred with an upgrade prompt. The quota resets daily.
Follow the topics you care about
Click Follow on any trend to add it to your watchlist. Followed trends gather in their own section in the sidebar and persist across sessions.
Following is useful for:
- Tracking a developing story over days or weeks.
- Building a shortlist for editorial planning.
- Keeping an eye on competitor-relevant topics without acting yet.
Click Follow again to remove a trend once it has run its course.
Following a trend does not send you notifications. For that, set a smart alert in the next step.
Set smart alerts
Open Alerts in the sidebar and click New alert. An alert fires automatically when a trend matches the conditions you define.
Conditions (combined together), for example:
- Score above
80 - Category is
Technology - Title contains
AI
Where to send it:
Get an email when the alert fires, with the trend title, score, stage, source count, and a direct link to open it in EarlyForge.
Name the alert and activate it. EarlyForge evaluates alerts as new trend data arrives, so notifications go out as soon as the conditions are met — which is how you catch a story while it is still pre-viral.
Start with a high threshold (score above 85) to avoid alert fatigue, then lower it once you know your typical volume. Your plan sets how many alerts you can run: Starter 10, Pro 20, Scale 50, Enterprise custom.
See the global picture
When the same story trends in several languages or countries at once, EarlyForge clusters the related signals into a single global story and tracks how it propagates across regions over time.
This cross-lingual view is where pre-viral detection pays off: a story spreading across three or more regions is often the biggest opportunity on the board, and you can see it forming before it dominates any single market.
Use all three together. Follow trends for your personal watchlist, set alerts for the urgent ones, and watch global stories for international momentum. Together they form a complete, real-time monitoring system.
What's next?
- Explore trends in depth — scoring, lifecycle stages, and how to read them.
- Follow and watch — manage your watchlist effectively.
- Alerts configuration — advanced conditions and destinations.
- Global events — cross-lingual story clustering and propagation.
- Generate from a trend — turn a monitored trend into a published article.