An attempt at analysis: 87 days of trending

[greyblob]

These are the results of 87 days of trending snapshots. Some interesting patterns but nothing too out of field.

engagement volume matters more than anything. trending success appears to be more about activity/attention volume

• Chapters: more chapters means more traffic. (duh)
• Chapters/week: 2 chapters per week seems to be the sweet spot. more is better though. ( 56% of trending novels post ≤1 ch/week. Only 30% post 2–3 (the sweet spot where persistence kicks in). Just 14% hit 5+)
• Tags: more tags means more visibility. novels with 20+ tags appear more often in trending.
• Favourites: this appears to be the most important metric. there's a very clear indication for this. Especially for favourite/chapter ratios.

Tier	Median favs/ch
1 appearance	7.2
2–3 appearances	10.2
4–6 appearances	14.7
7+ appearances	35.8

• Word count appears to have no effect.
• Tags have a small effect. likely just visibility.
• Rating count counts not the actual value. Total rating count gives an edge but you can still appear on the list with zero stars and zero votes. 13 novels hit trending with 0 rating and one of them was #9
• Most trending happens fast. 75% of all rank events occur within 3.3 days of a chapter posting. 90% are within 7.1 days

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now for some interesting data...

142 novels (9.0%) ever reached rank ≤10. Cliffs delta vs the rest:

Metric	Top 10	Rest	Ratio	δ
Favorites	4,248	520	8.2×	0.57
Rating count	50	12	4.1×	0.58
Readers	904	208	4.3×	0.56
Favs/chapter	39	12.5	3.1×	0.56
Chapters	112	55	2.0×	0.35
Chapters/week	2.0	1.0	2.0×	0.15
Tag count	17.5	15	1.2×	0.12
Rating average	4.6	4.6	1.0×	−0.10
Genre count	8.0	8.0	1.0×	0.00

Finding: Same pattern as persistence, but narrower gaps. Favorites and rating count are the strongest discriminators. Rating average and genre count are identical between top-10 and the rest.

Tag combos:

Outcome	Best tags
Best peak rank	Confident Protagonist, Kingdom Building, Determined Protagonist, First-time Intercourse, Xianxia
Most appearances	Elves, Futanari, Polygamy, Handsome Male Lead, Charismatic Protagonist, First-time Intercourse
% Top 10	Xianxia (22%), Elemental Magic (20%), Ruthless Protagonist (18%)
% Top 25	Confident Protagonist (51%), Determined Protagonist (48%), Kingdom Building (48%), Elves (47%)
Favs/chapter	Futanari (28), Multiple POV (26), Carefree Protagonist (26)

tag-outcome-heatmap.png is really interesting for this. id imagine the tags flatten further with more data.

Peak rank tags: Survival (1.49×), Conspiracies (1.46×), Cold Protagonist (1.42×), Post-apocalyptic (1.40×), Evil Gods (1.39×) — dark action-fantasy.
Durability tags: Succubus (1.36×), First-time Intercourse (1.35×), Doting Love Interests (1.26×) — serialized romance/harem.
kingdom-builder or dark action-fantasy appear to consistently overperform. Or just fanfiction.

Fanfics get 60% more favorites per chapter than originals. 19.8 vs 12.5 favs/chapter. Same rank outcomes, less effort. Built-in fandom advantage is real.
Fanfics are less R-18, less tagged, worse rated — and still outperform.




LIMITATION: this is not a full ScribbleHub analysis. It is novels that appeared in trending top-100 snapshots. So the analysis tells us what separates higher/persistent trending novels from lower/short-lived trending novels, not what causes a novel to enter trending in the first place.

I have not used any data related to view count, view count before/after trending, monthly views before/after trending, etc.

This is not concrete info because I know almost nothing about data-analysis. If someone has any experience with this, comment and I'll send you all the data I have.

 

[Lorelliad]

I salute you, blobby.

 

[greyblob]

I salute you, blobby.

here's the link https://trending.blobium.dev/ if anyone wants to check the progress so far
I dont know what @Juia_Darkcrest does to get this consistent. sacrificed a newborn most likely.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

here's the link https://trending.blobium.dev/ if anyone wants to check the progress so far
I dont know what @Juia_Darkcrest does to get this consistent. sacrificed a newborn most likely.

When did you start this?

Its been a bit, but I have been No.1 probably 8 times from mid Jan til March. Its a little less right now, but still going strong...

I write a lot and have a lot of people in my comments... and I respond to them.

 

[greyblob]

When did you start this?

Its been a bit, but I have been No.1 probably 8 times from mid Jan til March. Its a little less right now, but still going strong...

I write a lot and have a lot of people in my comments... and I respond to them.

late feb this year. hmm if youve been #1 in feb or march then i might need to delay the scrape to give more time to the list to stabilize

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

late feb this year. hmm if youve been #1 in feb or march then i might need to delay the scrape to give more time to the list to stabilize

Well, for example, I was 1st on April 9th, for like 8 hours, then I was bumped to 25th for some reason...

Still, most of these seem to line up with the few screen caps I do have in my Discord. Very nice.

 

[greyblob]

some charts werent attached. will do it tomorrow