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Popularity

Popularity is a key feature in TMDB that displays the popularity rate of different media types such as movies, TV, people, etc.

It is an important metric in TMDB as it helps to boost search results, provides useful sort value for discover endpoints, and is also just kind of fun to see items chart up and down

This metric is calculated based on different attributes for different media types. Some of this includes:

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Movies

  • Number of votes for the day

  • Number of views for the day

  • Number of users who marked it as a “favourite” for the day

  • Number of users who added it to their “watchlist” for the day

  • Release date

  • Number of total votes

  • Previous days score

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TV Shows

  • Number of votes for the day

  • Number of views for the day

  • Number of users who marked it as a “favourite” for the day

  • Number of users who added it to their “watchlist” for the day

  • Next/last episode to air date

  • Number of total votes

  • Previous days score

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People

  • Number of views for the day

  • Previous days score

There is no API to explore this data right now, but it is something that would be a lot of fun to dig into. The daily file exports do, however, contain the popularity data, so there is a record of the values starting on April 28, 2017.

Trending is another type of “popularity” score onTMDB,B but unlike popularity (discussed above), trending’s time windows are much shorter (daily, weekly). This helps us surface the relevant content of today (the new stuff) much easier.

Just like popularity, we track trending scores for movies, TVshows,s and people.