The worst feeling in content is spending a week on a post about something that was huge the week you started and forgotten the week you published.
The fix is to check whether people keep reading about a topic month after month, not just whether it's loud right now. Wikipedia page views are a free, honest way to check, and I made a Google Sheet that charts five years of them for any two topics: the Wikipedia Trends Tracker.
The short answer
An evergreen topic has steady reader interest every month for years, not one big spike. To find one, chart the topic's monthly Wikipedia page views over several years. Steady or rising lines are evergreen. Lines that spike and collapse are news. Paste two candidate topics into the Trends Tracker template to compare them side by side.
Why Wikipedia is a good signal for content
Keyword tools give you a monthly search estimate, usually one number, often rounded into a bucket. Wikipedia gives you the actual monthly readers for five years. That tells you two things a keyword tool doesn't:
- The shape. Steady, rising, seasonal, or a one-time spike.
- The intent. Wikipedia readers want to understand something. That's the same reader who'll read your explainer, watch your tutorial, or open your newsletter.
How to vet a content topic, step by step
- Write down two topics you're choosing between for your next piece.
- Find the Wikipedia article for each.
- Get the free template from the Trend Tracker page and make a copy.
- Open the Controls tab. It's the first one.
- Paste one link into Page 1 and the other into Page 2.
- Set Range to All time and Daily or monthly to Monthly.
- Click Fetch views + chart. The first time, Google asks you to allow the script.
- Look at the last 12 to 24 months, not the peak. Which one has more readers in an ordinary month?
- Look for seasonality. A line that rises every January (fitness, budgets, taxes) is evergreen with a calendar. Publish a few weeks before the rise.
A real example: a wave vs a steady line
From Wikimedia's API (English Wikipedia, human readers):
- Semaglutide, the drug in Ozempic and Wegovy, had about 261,000 readers in January 2025. By September 2026 it was down to about 39,000 a month. A big wave, now much smaller.
- Obsidian (software), the note-taking app, sat between about 17,000 and 34,000 readers every single month from January 2025 to September 2026. Smaller, but steady.
A post about semaglutide in early 2025 would have caught a huge audience fast, then faded. A post about Obsidian keeps finding readers. Both are fine choices. They just need different plans: ship the wave topic fast, and invest in the steady topic for the long run.
Pickleball is a third shape. Its article peaked in October 2023, but it still drew between about 82,000 and 113,000 readers every month of 2026 through September. Past the peak, still a big steady audience. See it on the Pickleball vs Tennis page.
Turn it into a topic list
Once you've checked a few pairs, keep a simple tab beside the template with one row per candidate topic:
- Topic and Wikipedia link
- Typical monthly readers in the last year
- Shape: steady, rising, seasonal, or spike
- Best month to publish, if it's seasonal
- Status: idea, drafting, published
Sort by shape first and readers second. Steady and rising topics with decent readers go to the top.
FAQ
What makes a topic evergreen?
Steady interest that doesn't depend on news. If people read about it in an ordinary month, every month, it's evergreen.
Can I use this for YouTube or newsletter topics?
Yes. Wikipedia readers are curious people trying to understand something, which is the same audience for explainers in any format.
Is this better than a keyword tool?
It's different. Keyword tools estimate searches for exact phrases. Wikipedia shows reading interest in the whole topic, with real history. Use both if you can. If you can only use one free thing, this is a good one.
Pick your next topic with real data. Get the free Wikipedia Trends Tracker and compare your top two ideas.
