Two topics can both have a Trend Signal score of 65 and mean completely different things for your content plan, depending on their direction. Score tells you "how active," direction tells you "which way it's headed" — and for planning purposes, direction often matters more.
New
A topic marked new has just started showing up in tracked data. There is not yet enough history to know whether it will keep climbing, plateau, or fizzle — which is exactly the trade-off. New topics carry the highest potential upside because almost nobody has covered them yet, and also the highest uncertainty. Treat a "new" tag as a signal to test cheaply (one piece of content, a small budget) rather than commit heavily on day one.
Rising
A topic marked rising has sustained, real growth — not a single spike, but a pattern. This is generally the highest-confidence window to act: the topic has proven it has legs, and it likely still has room to run before it peaks. If you are only going to act on one direction category, this is usually the one.
Falling
A topic marked falling may still show a high score — it can take a while for a score to come back down even after real interest has started fading, since it is measured against recent history. New content built around a falling topic tends to underperform, because you are arriving after the audience that cared has already moved on. This is the direction most worth being skeptical of, even when the raw number still looks impressive.
Flat
A topic marked flat is stable — neither growing nor shrinking meaningfully. This usually describes an established category rather than a "trend" in the moment-in-time sense. Flat topics can still be worth covering for evergreen content, just don't expect the momentum-driven boost that rising topics offer.
Putting it together
A simple mental model: new and rising are your "worth testing or acting on now" categories, flat is your "safe, evergreen" category, and falling is your "probably skip unless you have a specific angle" category. This is exactly the logic behind the verdicts ("Move fast," "Worth testing," "Deprioritize") on every topic's Business Playbook — the same framework, just automated.
Want to skip the manual scanning entirely? The Opportunities page is pre-filtered to only show topics that are rising or new, above a momentum threshold you control.