Question 1

How does Lemon Insider determine trending topics?

Accepted Answer

Lemon Insider's trending algorithm measures tag velocity — the ratio of how often a topic appears in the last 7 days compared to the prior 7 days. Topics with a velocity above 0.5x (50% more articles than usual) and at least 10 recent occurrences are considered trending. Brand-new topics with zero prior occurrences get a maximum velocity score. The algorithm runs hourly.

Question 2

What is a breaking story on Lemon Insider?

Accepted Answer

A breaking story is automatically detected when 5 or more articles with similar titles appear across multiple sources within a 2-hour window. Lemon Insider uses a text similarity algorithm (normalized Levenshtein distance) to cluster related articles. Breaking stories are shown prominently at the top of the page with a source count.

Question 3

How often is the trending page updated?

Accepted Answer

The trending topics data is recomputed and cached hourly via an automated cron job. The page itself revalidates every 5 minutes, so trending tags reflect news from the last 14 days within roughly 5–65 minutes of the latest crawl.

Trending