Trend & seasonality

Trend and seasonality

Two related sub-scores from one data source (Google Trends). Both are 0–100.

Trend

Trend measures the 12-month direction of search interest:

Climbing keywords get a high trend score.
Flat keywords get a middle score.
Falling keywords get a low score.

Reading the trend score

Score	What
80–100	Strongly climbing. Demand grew 30%+ over 12 months.
60–79	Climbing. Clear positive trajectory.
40–59	Flat. No major directional movement.
20–39	Declining. Interest fell 10–30%.
0–19	Steeply declining. Interest fell 30%+. May be category-dying or fad-collapsing.

A high trend score is reason to move fast (because more sellers will arrive). A very low trend score is reason to be skeptical even if other sub-scores look fine — you’d be buying into a fading category.

When trend is misleading

Brand-new keywords — Google Trends needs ~12 months to compute a stable trend. Newly-coined keywords may show no signal even if they’re popular.
Translated keywords — for non-US marketplaces, Hilal queries Google Trends in the local language. Quality varies.
Spiky one-off events — a viral TikTok drives one-month-spike trends; the 12-month trajectory may be misleading right after.

Seasonality

Seasonality measures how spiky vs. smooth the search interest is over a year. It’s not about whether a product is “seasonal” in the everyday sense (Christmas decorations) — it’s about whether demand is concentrated in a few months or spread evenly.

Reading the seasonality score

Score	What
80–100	Smooth — demand spread evenly across the year. Easy to forecast and stock.
60–79	Mostly smooth with a small seasonal lift.
40–59	Moderately seasonal. One or two peak months.
20–39	Highly seasonal. Most demand in 2-3 months.
0–19	Extremely spiky. Q4 gift items, Halloween costumes, etc.

Higher score is not always better

Default weight on seasonality is 10% (less than other sub-scores) because the right interpretation depends on your business:

For year-round operators, smooth (high score) is best. Even cash flow, easy to forecast.
For Q4-focused / gift sellers, low scores are opportunities (concentrated demand, less year-round competition).

Override the weight in Filters & weights — bump it up if you specifically want or avoid seasonal products.

Both sub-scores in the AI brief

The AI brief on the product detail page cross-references both sub-scores naturally — if a product is climbing and seasonal, the brief calls out when you’d want to time your launch (e.g., “demand peaks in November; aim for inventory ready by October 15th”).

Why these are smaller-weighted than demand and margin

Defaults: trend 15%, seasonality 10%. Together they’re 25% of the composite — meaningful but not dominant. The reasoning: a product can be a great long-term seller without being on a steep rising trend; a product can be highly seasonal without that being a problem if you’re set up for it. Demand and margin are more universally important.

Bump trend up to 25–30% if your strategy is trend-rider (find products on the upswing before others catch on). → Trend-rider preset