Everything looks like a trend on the way up. The difference between a trend and a fad only shows up afterwards, when the spike is over and you see where the line settles.
So the trick is to look at a long enough window that you can see "afterwards." I use five years of monthly Wikipedia page views, charted in a free Google Sheet I made, the Wikipedia Trends Tracker.
The short answer
A fad spikes and then falls back to roughly where it started. A trend keeps a higher floor after each spike, so the low points keep rising year after year. To tell them apart, chart at least two years of monthly interest and look at the low points, not the peaks.
Three shapes to look for
1. The fad: one mountain
One big spike, then a long slide back down. The months after the peak keep getting lower, and the line ends near or below where it began.
2. The trend: a rising floor
Spikes happen, but after each one the line settles higher than it was before. Year totals go up. The quiet months this year are busier than the quiet months last year.
3. The wave: up, then settling
A real rise followed by a real decline, ending somewhere above the start. Most things that were genuinely big for a while look like this. Whether a wave counts as a trend depends on where it settles.
How to check any topic, step by step
- Get the free template from the Trend Tracker page and make a copy.
- Open the Controls tab. It's the first one.
- Paste the Wikipedia link for the topic you're unsure about into Page 1.
- Paste a steady comparison into Page 2. Something in the same category that you know isn't going anywhere. This is your baseline.
- 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 your topic's line first. Find the peak. Then look at the months after it. If the baseline flattens it, the Views tab has every month's number for each page. To see the smaller line's shape, chart its column on its own.
- Ask one question: are the low points in the last year higher than the low points before the peak?
The baseline matters because a lot of big Wikipedia articles have drifted down in recent years. If your topic is falling at the same rate as the baseline, it's holding its share. If it's falling faster, interest is leaving.
Real examples from Wikipedia's data
All numbers below are monthly human views on English Wikipedia, from Wikimedia's pageviews API.
A fad: NFTs
The Non-fungible token article peaked at about 1.22 million views in January 2022. By September 2026 it was down to about 27,000 a month. That's around 2% of the peak, and well under the roughly 438,000 it had in October 2021, before the peak. One mountain.
Another fad: the Metaverse
The Metaverse article hit about 674,000 views in November 2021, the month after Facebook renamed itself Meta. By September 2026 it was at about 16,000 a month.
A trend: Padel
Padel, the racket sport, looks completely different. Adding its old and new article titles together, it had about 367,000 views in 2022, about 550,000 in 2023, about 769,000 in 2024, and about 819,000 in 2025. Every year higher than the last. No single giant spike. That's a rising floor.
You can see Padel next to another fast-growing racket sport on the Pickleball vs Padel page.
Mistakes that make fads look like trends
- A short window. Three months of anything looks like a trend if you start at the bottom.
- Daily data. One news day can make a chart look explosive. Monthly smooths that out.
- Looking at peaks. Peaks are news. Floors are interest.
- Missing a rename. If an article was renamed, its views are split across two titles, and a trend can look like a crash. Padel's article was renamed, which is why I added both titles together.
FAQ
How long should I look at to tell a trend from a fad?
At least two years of monthly data, and five is better. You need to see the period after the spike.
Isn't Google Trends enough for this?
Google Trends shows the shape of search interest on a 0 to 100 scale. It's useful, but every chart is rescaled to its own peak, so a fad's tail and a trend's floor can look similar. Real counts make the floor easier to read.
What if the topic has no Wikipedia article?
Then it's probably too early or too small to judge with this method. Check the closest broader topic that does have one.
Check your own "is this a trend?" topic in a minute. Get the free Wikipedia Trends Tracker, paste the link, and look at the floor.
