News volume data for AI assistants

News volume data on Trends MCP is a weekly 0-100 index of article mention counts with about 5 years of history. As of August 15, 2026, OpenAI had a news volume index of 44.0 with 1,589 article mentions in the period. The free plan includes 100 requests per month. Starter is $19 per month.

What the data showed in August 2026

OpenAI had a news volume index of 44.0 on August 15, 2026, down 17.91% from 53.6 on May 16, 2026 and down 25.17% from 58.8 on August 16, 2025. Article mentions moved from 1,935 on May 16, 2026 to 1,589 on August 15, 2026, a 3M volume change of -17.88%. The 1Y volume change was -25.26%, from 2,126 mentions on August 16, 2025.

The 2 windows tell the same story from different baselines: coverage of OpenAI is cooling from an exceptional 2025 peak, not collapsing. A -25.17% move from a high base still leaves the phrase at an index of 44.0, well above the floor most keywords sit at.

What the live news feed showed on August 19, 2026

The Google News Top News feed was led by politics and legal stories. Rank 1 was A Stunning Win for the Left in Florida: 6 Takeaways From Tuesday's Primaries from The New York Times. Rank 2 was NPR on the delayed 50% tariff on Canadian imports. Rank 3 covered the Alaska Senate race with two Dan Sullivans and a Mary Peltola. Rank 4 was deadline.com on ABC's First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC. Rank 5 was Politico on Wyoming's governor primary.

Further down the top 10: The Free Press at 6, AP News on Byron Donalds at 7, Reuters on Harvard paying $53 million to settle lawsuits over theft of body parts at 8, Fox News on the Iran blockade at 9, and NBC News on Ohio death row inmate Tyrone Noling at 10. CNBC's report that Moderna stock soared 90% on a cancer vaccine trial sat at 15.

The exact calls

get_trends returns the history. get_growth returns period percentages plus mention counts. get_top_trends with type Google News Top News returns the live feed with no keyword.

get_trends(keyword='openai', source='news volume', data_mode='weekly')

get_growth(keyword='openai', source='news volume', percent_growth=['3M', '1Y'])

How volume differs from sentiment

Volume counts how many articles mention a phrase. Sentiment scores whether coverage is positive or negative. A spike in volume with flat sentiment often means a factual event. A spike in volume with falling sentiment often means a controversy. The news sentiment data page covers the sentiment series in more depth.

The series is not outlet filtering. A keyword of New York Times scores coverage of that newspaper as a topic, not a restriction of the corpus to that newspaper.

Who uses news volume data

Equity researchers watch issuer names into events, then confirm on sentiment. PR teams track brand mention volume around a launch. Content teams watch a topic's volume curve to decide whether a story is still rising or has peaked.

A practical workflow: call get_growth with 3M and 1Y on a list of phrases, keep the ones with positive volume growth, then call get_top_trends during a breaking window to see which stories are leading the feed. A desk tracking 30 phrases can run that loop inside 100 requests per month on the free plan.

Limits and caveats

Low-volume phrases return weak quality scores or misses. The 0-100 index is relative to that keyword's own peak in the window. Volume does not measure reach, engagement, or ad impressions. A mention in a wire story that 200 papers republish still counts as a small number of articles.

Quota is 100 requests per month on the free plan, Starter $19 per month. A crawl of 10,000 keywords overnight is a different product. Deduplicating the list and caching weekly snapshots is how research teams stay inside the month.

Getting started

Sign up on the free tier, copy the API key, and make the first call with any HTTP client. The setup guide covers Claude, Cursor, and plain REST in 4 copy-paste blocks. The Google Trends page covers search interest in more depth, and the Wikipedia trends page covers reference interest.