Overview

Trending content highlights pages and documents with recent engagement, so you can quickly discover what colleagues are actively viewing and searching. It appears directly in the search experience, improving content discoverability across your intranet.

What is trending content?

Trending content surfaces an organization-level list of popular items, based on recent activity. It shows up to 3 suggestions in the search box before you type, and may also add a small Trending badge to relevant items in autocomplete.

How it works

At a glance

When you click or tap into the search bar, search shows two sections: Recent searches (your personal history) and Trending in your organization (an organization-level signal). Items are filtered by your access and visibility rules, so anything you can't access is never shown.

If trending is temporarily unavailable, the search box falls back gracefully. You will still see Recents and can type as usual.

What you'll see in different situations

• No recents, no input. Only the Trending in your organization section is shown.

• With recents, no input. Recent searches is shown first, then Trending in your organization.

• User starts typing. Autocomplete suggestions take priority. Trending may add a badge to eligible items but does not re-rank typed results.

What content can trend?

Trending primarily includes intranet content such as pages and documents that are actively opened from across the platform. The trending list is computed per organization and respects your existing permission models, including ACL, ABAC, and site access controls.

Quality guardrails

Tenant activity threshold. Trending turns on when recent search activity in your organization is above a minimum level. This protects low-activity organizations from stale lists.

Document eligibility. Items need recent engagement to be considered, for example at least one open or click in the last 7 days.

List size and freshness. The service maintains a capped pool, for example the top 30 or so, and displays up to 3 results in the box for fast scanning.

Diversity and staleness controls. Post-launch improvements reduce repeat dominance of the same evergreen pages, giving newly relevant items a chance to appear.

Permissions and privacy

Trending suggestions are filtered against your existing permissions before display. If a trending item fails a visibility check for your account, it is excluded from your view.

Trending is organization-scoped, so there is no cross-tenant exposure of data or queries. All content visibility and audience rules already configured in your environment continue to apply.

Availability and platforms

Trending content is available in two places:

• Web. Shown in the global search bar dropdown.

• Mobile (iOS and Android). Shown in the search entry experience with tap-to-search patterns for easy discovery.

Performance and reliability

Trending is designed to appear quickly after focusing the search bar without blocking typing. If the service times out or returns nothing, the search experience simply hides the Trending section and continues to work normally.

Admin controls

Administrators can enable or disable trending content as part of search configuration rollouts. If the feature is disabled, users see the existing pre-query behavior, which is Recents or an empty state.

What signals determine "trending"?

Trending is designed to capture what is gaining attention now, balancing recency and sustained interest, while keeping the logic simple and explainable. Three signals shape what surfaces:

• Engagement. Recent opens and clicks over short and medium windows, with higher weight for very recent activity.

• Freshness. Lightweight penalties prevent the same evergreen items from dominating the top slots week after week.

• Scope. Computed per organization, then filtered by the viewer's access rights.

Best practices for content owners

To increase the chances your content trends, keep pages up to date and timely, especially around policy changes, launches, and seasonal information. Promote key content through announcements and sites to drive initial engagement, and use clear, descriptive titles so trending suggestions are easy to recognize at a glance.

Troubleshooting

If trending content does not behave as expected, the sections below cover what may have happened and what to do about it.

The Trending section is not showing

• What happened: Trending content turns on only when recent search activity in your organization is above a minimum level, when administrators have enabled the feature, and when the service is available. If any of these conditions are not met, the section does not appear.

• What to do: First, give it some time. If your organization has been quiet on search recently, trending may simply have nothing to show. If the section continues to be missing, check with your administrator that trending content is enabled in search configuration. Search continues to work normally without the trending section.

A specific item is not appearing in trending

• What happened: Items need recent opens or clicks to be considered for trending. Even if an item is highly engaged with, you will only see it in your trending list if you have permission to view it. Diversity guardrails may also rotate frequently appearing items out temporarily to make room for newly relevant ones.

• What to do: Open the item directly to confirm you have access. If access is the issue, request it from the content owner. If the item simply has not been opened often enough, content owners can drive engagement through announcements or site promotion. If the item has trended recently, wait and check again later as the rotation moves through other relevant content.

Trending content looks the same week after week

• What happened: Diversity guardrails are designed to reduce evergreen pages dominating the top slots, but they only take effect once newly relevant content accumulates enough recent engagement to displace existing items.

• What to do: If you are a content owner, promote new pages through announcements and site posts so they pick up enough opens and clicks to enter the trending pool. New items cannot trend without recent activity.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Does trending content change the order of search results when I type a query?

Ans: No. Trending appears in the pre-query experience and may add a small badge on eligible items in autocomplete. It does not re-rank results for typed queries.

Q: How many trending suggestions are shown?

Ans: Up to 3 suggestions appear in the search box for quick scanning. Behind the scenes, a larger trending pool is maintained and filtered by your permissions.

Q: Can administrators or content owners manually pin items to trending?

Ans: Not in this version. Trending is based on recent engagement signals. Manual pinning is out of scope for this release.

Q: Will I ever see trending items I do not have access to?

Ans: No. All suggestions pass through your organization's permission and visibility checks before display.

Q: Is trending content available on mobile?

Ans: Yes. Mobile search integrates Trending to improve discoverability with tap-to-search behavior.