"Interest in this has exploded" is one of the most common sentences in reporting, and one of the least supported. Usually the evidence is a Google Trends screenshot, a few viral posts, or the writer's own feed.
If you need a number you can actually cite, Wikipedia page views are one of the best free options. They're public, they go back to 2015, and they count real people. I built a free Google Sheet that charts them for any two or three topics: the Wikipedia Trends Tracker.
The short answer
To measure public interest in a topic, use the topic's monthly Wikipedia page views. Wikimedia publishes them free, counted separately for humans and bots, back to July 2015. Chart several years to show the change, compare against a related topic for context, and cite the source as "English Wikipedia page views, Wikimedia pageviews API, human readers."
Why page views work as evidence
- They're counts. "About 371,000 people read the Semaglutide article in September 2024" is a sentence with a number in it. A 0 to 100 index isn't.
- They're public and checkable. Anyone, including your editor, can pull the same number from the same API.
- They have history. You can show what "normal" looked like before the story broke.
- They measure attention, not opinion. Reading about something doesn't mean liking it. That's often exactly the neutral measure you want.
How to measure interest, step by step
- Find the Wikipedia article that best matches your topic. If there are several (a drug and its brand names, a person and their scandal), pick the one people most likely land on.
- Get the free template from the Trend Tracker page and make a copy.
- Open the Controls tab. It's the first one.
- Paste your topic into Page 1.
- Paste a comparison into Page 2: a related topic, a rival, or a stable baseline in the same field.
- 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.
- Note the peak month, the typical month before the story, and the typical month now.
- Write it up as a change from a baseline, not just a peak: "readership rose from about X a month to about Y."
A real example: the GLP-1 story
From Wikimedia's API (English Wikipedia, human readers): the Semaglutide article had about 28,000 readers in October 2021. It peaked at about 371,000 in September 2024. By September 2026 it was back to about 39,000 a month.
That's a far more useful sentence than "interest exploded." It shows the rise, the size of the peak, and that the curiosity has mostly settled. Compare it with the second big GLP-1 drug on the Semaglutide vs Tirzepatide page.
Culture stories work the same way. On the Barbie vs Oppenheimer page, you can see that Barbie won the box office but Oppenheimer won the reading. On Taylor Swift vs Beyoncé, both articles peaked in the same Super Bowl month, at very different heights.
How to cite it honestly
- Say what it is. "Monthly views of the English Wikipedia article, human readers only, from the Wikimedia pageviews API."
- Round. "About 371,000" is honest. "371,248" suggests a precision readers don't need.
- Give a baseline. A peak means nothing without the normal month before it.
- Don't call it popularity or approval. It's attention. People read about things they dislike, fear, or don't understand.
- Check for renames. If an article moved to a new title, its history is split. Add both titles.
FAQ
Can I cite Wikipedia page views in an article or paper?
Yes. They're published by the Wikimedia Foundation and are widely used in research. Cite the source, the language edition, the date range, and that you used human readers only.
Are Wikipedia page views better than Google Trends?
They answer a different question. Google Trends shows relative search interest. Wikipedia shows how many people read about a topic. For a citable count with history, page views are usually better. For "what are people searching right now," Google Trends is.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. The template does the API calls. You paste links and read the chart.
Back up your next "interest is rising" with a real number. Get the free Wikipedia Trends Tracker.
