The main public sources
- Google Trends, Trending Now. Rising searches in more than 100 countries and regions, refreshed about every ten minutes, with search volume and news links for each trend (Google help).
- Baidu Hot Search. The most searched topics on Baidu, China’s largest search engine (top.baidu.com). In Chinese.
- Wikipedia’s most-read pages. The Topviews tool lists the most viewed articles per language edition and day (pageviews.wmcloud.org/topviews). It shows what people want to understand, often a day behind the news.
- X Explore. Trending posts and topics, by location (x.com/explore). It reflects what people post, not what they search.
- The GDELT Project. An open dataset that monitors world news coverage in many languages (gdeltproject.org). Useful for checking whether a trend is backed by reporting.
Links checked 19 October 2026.
Why one country’s list is not the world’s
A trending list is always local. A football final can top searches in one country and be absent next door; a new phone launch can trend in twenty countries at once. To see what is truly global, you need to compare lists and notice which topics show up in many places on the same day.
Reading trends well
- Rising is not the same as big: trend lists favour sudden jumps, so a small topic can outrank a steady giant.
- Check the news behind it: a spike without reporting is often a game, a show or a rumour.
- Watch for language: the same event may trend under different words in each country.
One list, with the why
Whyworld does this comparison for you. It reads public search trends from many countries, including Google Trends, Baidu Hot Search and GDELT, and turns them into one ranked list of the day’s topics.
- What the world is searching: Whyworld reads public search trends from many countries and builds one list of the day’s biggest topics.
- Why it is trending: each topic gets a short, plain note on why people are looking it up.
- Where: a world map and a country list show where each topic is being searched.
- Sources: every topic links to the reporting behind it, and a Report an error button sits on every topic.
- Two briefs a day: a morning brief at the hour you pick, an evening brief, and an alert when a new topic enters the top 10.
An AI editor picks and explains the topics, and Whyworld says so. Trend data comes from public sources such as Google Trends, Baidu Hot Search and the GDELT Project.
You can also see what each country is searching on this site.