How we know

Everything here starts with readers: how many times a day the public reference pages about a person are read, counted from public readership data in every language we measure.

A reader is attention, not approval. People read about someone out of admiration, curiosity or alarm, and each of them counts the same.

We count only the visits the readership data records as people. Visits its publisher identifies as crawlers or other automated programs are removed before the numbers reach us.

Automated traffic that slips through usually arrives on phones or on computers alone, while people read on both. A rise that looks like that is marked as suspected automated and left off every list that ranks rises.

A usual day is a middle value, not an average, so one automated burst cannot move it.

A figure like 27× usual compares the day a rise peaked with the person's own usual day before it. The usual day is the middle value of the 30 days before the rise began, so one odd day cannot move it, and we print it only when at least 14 of those days were counted.

So 27× usual means 27 times as many readers on the peak day as on a usual day. It compares a person with themselves, never with anyone else.

While a rise is still under way, the map compares the last six hours with the usual for the same hours, and its figure says so.

Where there was no usual readership to rise from, we print no multiple, only that it is a first measurable readership.

A fame score is a reading of public attention on a scale of 0 to 100. It weighs how widely a person has been read over the long run together with how much they are read these days, so one busy day moves it only a little.

The boards rank people by it and show who is actually read most, whoever they are. A place on a board is not praise.

It is not a measure of worth, talent, character or credibility. It cannot be bought, and nobody can edit their own.

Momentum ranks people by how far this week stands above their usual: their readers over the last seven days against the four weeks before them. A small name that doubles can outrank a large one holding steady.

It measures direction, not the future. Nothing on the site says who will rise next.

A moment is a dated event we can tie to a rise in readers: a release, an election, an award, a match, a death.

We say an event explains a rise only when the evidence is strong: its day fits the rise, it is about the person, and a source we can link confirms it. Then the page says Why now and names its sources.

When an event happened around the same time but the evidence for a cause is weaker, the page says Around the same time and claims nothing more.

Deaths, legal matters and health are told only when a source names and dates them, never from wording alone. A death can be the reason once the recorded date or named reports confirm it.

A legal matter is shown only when the offence is named, by the person's own record or by reports from named outlets, in neutral words that keep the presumption of innocence. A legal matter, an allegation, a health matter the person or their family announced, and an act of a state are only ever around the same time, never the cause.

No legal, allegation or health line is ever told about a child. For people known for a crime, or as the victim of one, we tell no generated reason, with two exceptions: a dated act of the state, such as an execution, that reports confirm, shown as an event that happened and never as the reason for the rise; and, on the page of someone known for a crime, a film, series or book about them.

Other people a moment moved are listed only when the same event is tied to their own rise. Being read on the same days is not a shared cause.

When nothing explains a rise, we say so: no cause found yet.

• That a rise means approval, or that a fall says anything about a person's worth.
• A cause we cannot source.
• Fans, followers or searches. We count readers.
• Where readers are. We measure languages, not countries.
• What will happen next.
• A size for the attention that follows a death. In those days we show no multiple.

If a number or a reason is wrong, tell us and we will look at it.