Grow readership

TrendMD is the world's leading scholarly content discovery platform designed exclusively for distributing high-quality content across various disciplines. When you join our network, your content appears as recommended across our network of publishers – a network that includes the largest and most authoritative publications in their fields.

TrendMD optimizes for engagement. Instead of blindly recommending all content to all readers across the web, our algorithm recommends the right content to the right reader, ensuring you're growing readership and engagement simultaneously. The more interesting your content is and the more traffic you drive, the more you will be recommended throughout our network.

TrendMD powers a free content recommendation widget that recommends content for readers based on their reading habits. The widget recommends your content across your site and other publications in our network. As long as your credit balance is above zero, your content will be recommended on other publications’ sites across our network.

The result is increased content discoverability for readers and publishers alike.

In addition, TrendMD uses a credit system that charges for visits we send to you from elsewhere in our network (1 credit a visitor) and rewards you for readers you send to another publication in our network (0.5 credits a reader). This means that as your readership grows, you earn credits that you can reinvest in yourself to fuel more growth.

Getting started is easy! Just click here to schedule a consultation with a member of our team. (Note: Unfortunately, we do not currently work with individual authors looking to promote their published works.)

TrendMD offers publishers and content producers numerous benefits. To list a few:

1. Readership growth: TrendMD helps marketers attract high-quality views at scale by pushing out content on top scholarly sites. Advertisers use our marketplace to control which content is distributed over TrendMD’s vast network of publishers.
2. Drive conversions: To drive traffic that converts into leads, downloads, sign-ups, or other engagements, TrendMD’s recommendation engine learns and pushes relevant content most likely to interest your targeted users. You can then capture leads with engaging CTAs on-site.
3. Drive user engagement and content usage: TrendMD looks beyond just related links to help people discover, read, and cite interesting scholarly content from your journals and websites through personalized recommendations. Our recommendation algorithms continuously optimize the placements of links to your content for the right audience while readers are actively looking for something interesting to discover. TrendMD’s dashboard lets you track incoming traffic, link clicks, and other KPIs in real-time. You can analyze content performance and optimize your campaigns to meet your goals and improve ROI. Read: TrendMD provides higher reader engagement than Google Scholar or Twitter.
4. Increased brand awareness: TrendMD’s content discovery platform recommends content through high-impact placements alongside editorials on top scholarly sites across the web, matching advertisers with relevant publisher audiences across all categories, from STM, humanities, and social sciences. Your content can reach millions of viewers and gain valuable interactive exposure within a credible, trustworthy context.

TrendMD increases pageviews by recommending your content on other articles throughout the TrendMD network. Installing the TrendMD widget on your website(s) typically increases article pageviews by 3-5%.

For content providers and publishers on our Starter Plan (not paying for credits), about 75% of your additional article views will come from visitors on your own sites finding links to your content in the TrendMD widget (red box below). The remaining ~25% will come from visitors finding links to your content in the widget on third-party sites.

Once you’re paying for credits, you can set a precise budget for how many extra visitors you want us to send you monthly.

Content discovery is a rapidly growing field in digital media that uses predictive algorithms to help people discover content they may like but never knew existed. Social media platforms often integrate discovery-based features into their sites, such as Facebook's News Feed or YouTube's Recommended for You section. Discovery platforms like TrendMD are built around a predictive engine that all publishers can integrate into their sites, surfacing targeted recommendations for their readers. Content recommendations are offered in various ways on publisher websites and apps. Recommended stories can be placed within content streams/feeds on a publisher's homepage or along the right side of an article. The most impactful placement often immediately follows the end of an article, though recommendations can also appear mid-article. These promoted recommendations are less intrusive than traditional online banner ads, and the best examples create real value for consumers by providing them with relevant and informative content. Story-driven content also enables marketers to develop a stronger emotional connection with their target audiences in a way that direct advertisements can’t. Content discovery can drive results for marketers across industries and serve many different metrics or goals.

Search marketing is a type of 'pull marketing.' Search customers have typed in what they want and are in the market for your product or service. The customer is 'pushing,' and advertisers only need to pull them in. These ads are designed to make a 'sales pitch' to the user.

Display marketing is a type of 'push marketing.' When the display ad is placed on a user's site, the user is not specifically searching for your product or service. Instead, they may be viewing a video, checking their favorite news or social site, researching, or taking other action. In this case, the advertiser is pushing the awareness of their product onto the user. Display ads are similar to traditional television commercials. Most of the audience will not be interested in the product or service (unless highly targeted or via retargeting), at least not at that time. However, the ads may foster brand awareness, imparting a visual impression in the viewer's mind so they may recall your ad if and when they need your product or service.

TrendMD delivers over 1 billion monthly recommendations to over 100 million unique users on 4,500 websites from over 300 scholarly publishers. Our algorithms recommend your content to readers at a critical moment when readers are steeped in content consumption mode. This moment is when readers are most open to discovering something new.

Not at all! Despite our name, TrendMD is a content recommender system currently used across all academic disciplines, ranging from physics to music theory; we just began as a recommendation tool for medical content, thus the name.

We take your data privacy very seriously. Whether you’re simply a content lover who consumes our content or a TrendMD client, your data is safe with us. We do not share it with any 3rd parties – no exceptions. See TrendMD Privacy Policy for more details.

No. We operate as a guest on your website. The TrendMD widget is designed to load after the rest of the page, ensuring it doesn't interfere with your website's performance.

TrendMD's traffic lift is a percentage increase based on the number of additional views relative to baseline traffic. This means that both small and large publishers can see comparable percentage lifts.

1. Large publishers: They have more baseline traffic and can earn more credits but require additional views to achieve the same percentage lift.
2. Small publishers: They need fewer additional views to see the same percentage lift and, therefore, pay less overall to boost their traffic compared to large publishers.

TrendMD exists to grow your readership, not reduce it. Clicking a TrendMD link opens the page in a new tab, so visitors don't leave your site. However, you can block direct competitors from appearing on your site.

The TrendMD recommendation widget is 2 lines of code you install on your website(s). Once installed, the widget recommends relevant articles to your readers using our recommendation algorithm.

At any given time, at least half of the widget's recommendations will come from your publications. The remainder (at most half) will come from other publishers in our network.

The TrendMD widget promotes your content:

1. On your own article pages (keeping visitors engaged on your sites for longer). This is free!
2. On third-party websites (bringing new visitors to your sites). This costs 1 credit per visitor. 

In addition, TrendMD widget promotes third-party content on your website. Every visitor that clicks a link to a third-party site earns you 0.5 credits

For the widget to make recommendations, the following elements are needed:

1. Abstract and/or blog content
2. Title
3. First author
4. Publication date

All articles on your site that contain this information will be included in the internal recommendation pool.

A sponsored article simply determines where this article will be seen in the TrendMD network.

Sponsored articles will be recommended across our network as long as your credit balance is above zero.

Non-sponsored articles will be recommended in the widget on your website(s), but will not appear in recommendations on other publishers' sites.

Similarly, articles other publishers have designated as 'sponsored' will appear in the widget on your site as third-party links.

In order for TrendMD to generate the initial recommendations for articles, we need to gather key article metadata (information about the article):

Key article metadata includes:

• Article title
• Article URL
• Abstract
• Author names (when available)
• Publication date (when available)
• Journal

After you're onboarded, TrendMD automatically crawls your website to acquire the necessary article metadata. Once installed, the widget automatically collects metadata from newly published articles.

After your account is created, you can log in to your account from anywhere on the TrendMD site by clicking on the Login icon at the top right.

Or by going directly to our sign-in page.
To create an account, please click here to access your demo.

You can share your login information with other individuals in your organization. Just be aware that they will have access to all the same features and permissions that you do.

You can also request additional logins for others at your organization by contacting your Account Manager (if you don't know who your AM is, contact us using this contact form).

In-network links (i.e. non-sponsored articles) are articles that are recommended across your websites only.

‘Sponsored' links are articles that are recommended across the TrendMD network.

A click refers to when a user clicks on a link. An impression means that a user has seen (or potentially seen) a link to your site. An impression is counted whenever an item appears in the current page of results, whether or not the item is scrolled into view, as long as the user need not click to see more results (such being required to click "see more" to see the link). 

All clicks are also impressions, but not all impressions convert into clicks

Setup takes as little as 10 minutes. After creating an account and indexing your content, your Account Manager will send you your site-specific widget code.

In articles formatted with a 2-column layout, the widget tends to perform best if placed directly below the abstract.

With articles formatted with a 1-column layout, the widget tends to perform best if placed on the right side of the page.

That said, we encourage you to A/B test to determine the optimal widget placement that yields the highest clickthrough rate for your website and readers.

There is no need to wait! The TrendMD widget code works the same way regardless of the platform**. Additionally, the transition does not affect any of the backend work that TrendMD does to index the content and distribute your links across the network, so you will have complete continuity to follow through the resulting analytics in your TrendMD dashboard.

**If you are switching to/from WordPress, please contact us.

1. No indexing request is needed if the widget is installed via a WordPress plugin; instead, TrendMD staff will register your organization and website(s) in the Admin Dashboard

2.  Download the plugin from https://wordpress.org/plugins/trendmd/

3.  Install the downloaded plugin in your WordPress Admin Dashboard by following these steps:

• From the Plugins menu, click on “Add New”
• Upload the plugin zip file by clicking “Upload Plugin”
• Click “Choose file” to upload the zip file you downloaded
• Click “Install Now”
• Click “Activate Plugin”
• You will see a “Plugin activated” notification at the top of the page, and “TrendMD” will appear in the list of activated plugins

4.  During the installation process, the plugin attempts automatic identification

5.  If this fails, the wizard will request the journal ID, and TrendMD can provide it upon request

6.  Once the plugin is installed, enable indexing

7.  Click “Continue” to go to the TrendMD website, and click on “Create account”

8.   Login with your TrendMD account

9.   Complete your registration

10. Add your website to TrendMD

The TrendMD dashboard shows the following metrics:

• Additional visitors acquired: This tracks additional visitors brought to your website from external links
• Additional pageviews generated: This tracks clicks on your TrendMD recommended content on your website
• Third-party affiliate link revenue: This tracks credits earned from visitors clicking on third-party sponsored links shown across your website(s)

You can also track TrendMD visitors through Google Analytics.

The clickthrough rate (CTR) is a key engagement metric for your content. It measures the number of times a reader clicks on your link divided by the total impressions (the number of times the link was seen, whether or not they clicked on it).

A high CTR means that a higher proportion of people viewing your widget or links are clicking on it. We consider anything above 3% to be a high widget CTR and anything about 0.3% to be a high link CTR.

Our algorithms are designed to recommend your content at the most optimal times in the most optimal places.

A common cause of low widget CTRs is when the widget is less visible on the page. We encourage you to play around with the widget placement and see what results in the best ROI. See here for more recommendations.

Part of what makes TrendMD stand out is the level of sophistication of our recommendation algorithms. Because the algorithm learns about your content over time, the recommendations to your content will improve drastically over the first few months the widget is installed. Read about the experiment in this post.

TrendMD works by recommending similar content to readers. If your content is too broad or narrow in scope, it can take longer for the algorithm to determine optimal recommendation locations. If you think this might be preventing you from reaching your goals, speak to your Account Manager.

TrendMD itself is free. Once installed, TrendMD recommends your content to readers on other parts of your site, as well as external content to your readers. You earn credits for each reader who clicks on a recommendation to an external article. Once your credit balance exceeds zero, your content will be recommended across our vast network of 8600+ publishers and 5 million monthly readers.

The TrendMD widget generally increases pageviews on your website(s) by 3-5% for free. In terms of increasing readership, the widget earns you, on average, 7-10 credits (or, put differently, 7-10 new readers) per 1000 widget loads. These credits can be used to acquire further new visitors at a rate of 1 credit per visitor, so that as you grow, you’re reinvesting in your further growth.

For general technical support or information regarding your account, please fill out this contact form or contact your customer support manager.

Due to demand, there will occasionally be a delay in generating recommendations for new articles. In general, the delay should be no longer than 30 minutes. If, however, you notice that more than 24 hours have passed without any recommendations generated for new articles, please contact us using this contact form.

By default, we append UTM tracking codes to all the indexed content for your websites. If you want to set up different link-tracking parameters, simply contact your Account Manager or fill out this contact form and ask us to append a tracking parameter to your account.

If you close the page before indexing is complete, you can resume the indexing by reopening the TrendMD settings page (Plugins->TrendMD). The WP plugin will resume indexing from where it left off.

Any articles you mark as 'Sponsored' will appear as recommendations on third-party websites.

To sponsor an article, please contact us.

The Editor’s Choice label boosts the visibility of your articles in the widget on your website(s).

‘Editor's Choice’ articles will always appear in the #1 spot in the recommendations widget (i.e. the upper right corner) when related to the article. This means they will appear more frequently and in a better position than without this designation.

If multiple articles are designated as ‘Editor's choice,’ the single most relevant article from that pool of ‘Editor's Choice’ articles is shown. Articles designated as ‘Editor's Choice’ will stay that way until the label is manually removed.

To set an article as Editor’s Choice, please contact us.

You will be notified that the articles were successfully updated and will be marked as 'Editor's Choice' under the ‘Status’ column.

To remove ‘Editor’s Choice’ status from an article, please contact us.

You will be notified that the articles were successfully updated and the 'Editor's Choice' will be removed from the articles under the ‘Status’ column.