How to read our editorial scores and badges.

SIGNAL SCORE

Signal is the active Global editorial profile's relevance score for a story. It helps order coverage against the profile's current topics, entities, include and exclude keywords, geography, and scoring weights. The stored profile signal combines six inputs: a Google Trends signal, freshness, stored viral potential, source convergence, geographic relevance, and editorial importance. Each input is multiplied by the percentage weight configured in the active Global profile; the weighted result is bounded to 0–100.

The result is then adjusted by profile relevance: weighted score × (0.50 + relevance × 0.005), where relevance is the profile match score from 0 to 100. This factor ranges from 0.50 to 1.00. A card shows the saved profile signal when available; an em dash means that no saved score is available. It is not replaced with Viral Potential.

A higher value means stronger alignment and priority under the active editorial profile. It is not a probability that a claim is true, a universal measure of importance, or a promise that a story will be published. Results depend on the active profile, its weights, and the available source and trend data.

VIRAL POTENTIAL

Viral Potential is an editorial attention estimate, not a prediction that a story will go viral. When no Google Trends match is available, the current calculation is 0.65 × stored virality score + 0.35 × attention score. When matching Trends records are available, the Trend Score is combined with the stored virality and attention values: 0.78 × Trend Score + 0.14 × stored virality + 0.08 × attention, capped at 100.

The separate VIRAL card badge is displayed at Viral Potential 70 or above. That threshold controls the label; it does not promise reach, sharing, or popularity. Viral Potential and Signal are different indicators: Viral estimates attention, while Signal reflects the active Global profile and its relevance weighting.

TREND SCORE

When matching Google Trends data is available, Trend Score combines the strongest story-to-trend match (45%), trend velocity (25%), search volume (20%), geographic coverage (5%), and story novelty (5%). The inputs are scaled indicators from the Trends records available to 24SIGNAL; they can reflect different places and collection windows. The score describes that available snapshot, not all searches or public opinion.

An em dash on a card means there is no matching Trends record to display. It does not mean search interest is zero. A numeric zero, when a matching record exists, is different from missing data. Search interest gives context; it does not verify a report or establish that a claim is true.

OPPORTUNITY SCORE

Opportunity is a time-sensitive ordering heuristic. It starts with 55% Viral Potential + 30% freshness + 15% trend velocity, plus a recency bonus of up to 0.5 points that declines linearly over the first 24 hours. The result is multiplied by 0.55 after 24 hours; in that band it is multiplied by a further 0.55 when trend velocity is below 70. After 48 hours, the score is multiplied by 0.25. The final value is bounded to 0–100.

Freshness is calculated from the story's first-seen time when available, then its event time, then its last-seen time. The current bands are: up to 6 hours, score 100 down to 92 (“breaking”); 6–24 hours, 92 down to 60 (“today”); 24–48 hours, 60 down to 5 (“aging”); 48–72 hours, 5 (“archive”); and older than 72 hours, 0 (“archive”). Opportunity helps rank timely coverage. It is not a business forecast, a guarantee of editorial selection, or a prediction of future performance.

VERIFIED

On a Global story card, VERIFIED indicates that the displayed article is the current public publication and has passed the platform's publication eligibility checks. In the normal publication path, the article must pass QA and match the current story revision; Evidence must be resolved, Fact Lock must be locked, and the article must include a qualifying reference to verified source evidence.

VERIFIED does not mean that a person independently confirmed every sentence or that multiple unrelated publishers corroborated every claim. Evidence can support a properly attributed statement without independently proving the underlying statement. The badge reports the platform's recorded publication gates; it is not a guarantee of infallibility or a substitute for reading the cited reporting.

Badges, formats and homepage placement

Featured, Developing, Just In and More Signals are homepage placement sections, not verification badges. “Breaking” is a freshness band used by internal ranking logic; it is not currently a separate public article badge. “Fresh” and “Trending Now” are not displayed as Global article-card badges in the current renderer. A geographic label describes a category or reported location; it does not indicate a verification result. VIRAL is the only score-threshold badge described above.

Signals help prioritize. Evidence sets the factual limits.

Signal, Viral Potential, Trend and Opportunity answer different editorial questions. They are computed from persisted story data, the active profile rules and the Trends records available at calculation time. Coverage can be incomplete and inputs can change; a missing value is not automatically zero.

None of these indicators replaces source attribution, Evidence, Fact Lock or article QA. They are editorial ordering tools, not scientific measurements, accuracy guarantees, or certain forecasts. AI assistance is not an independent human fact-check.