Neutral mood holds as World News dominates and Tech drags sentiment lower
Public interest is surging for “sky vs mystics” (1000+ traffic) despite zero headline mentions, a clear attention gap versus what outlets are publishing.
News Sentiment Meter
The collective emotional tone of headlines across major news sources, scored from −1.00 (very negative) to +1.00 (very positive).
Today’s sentiment score is -0.0423 (47.9%, labeled Neutral) across 2,881 headlines, only slightly higher than the prior snapshot (+0.0039). The balance is still tilted negative (943 negative vs 767 positive, with 1,171 neutral), and the biggest consistent drag comes from negative-leaning categories like Crime (avg -0.3005) and Military (avg -0.2723), plus Technology’s sizable volume (512 headlines) at an average -0.0614.
Sentiment trend
Overall news sentiment across the last 21 measured snapshots.
What the internet is searching for
Top Google search trends by volume. The second bar shows how many of today's scraped headlines actually mention each topic — a big gap means the public is searching for something the press hasn't covered.
Coverage by category
Share of today's headlines by topic.
Sentiment distribution
How today's headlines spread across the emotional range.
Which topics are positive, which are negative
Average sentiment score per category. Bars left of centre skew negative.
The words carrying today's news
Most frequent meaningful terms across every headline analysed.
Biggest move Explosion: Mark Carney becomes a headline-and-search anchor
“mark carney” is the most fully-aligned topic today: it’s a top Google trend at 2000+ traffic and it shows up in 114 of the 2,881 scraped headlines. That makes it one of the rare cases where search demand and newsroom output are moving together at scale.
The headline-word list reinforces this Canada-focused pull: “canada” appears 49 times and “carney” appears 33 times in today’s headlines. In the same dataset, World News is the dominant category by volume at 1,235 headlines (42.9% share), so a large, world-facing political story has plenty of distribution capacity today.
Quiet signal Quiet: Searches outpace headlines on Sky vs Mystics
The sharpest mismatch between what people are searching and what major outlets are writing is “sky vs mystics”: it has 1000+ Google search traffic but headline_coverage is 0. That is the cleanest signal in today’s measurements that attention is forming outside mainstream headline coverage.
By contrast, another WNBA query, “tempo vs sun,” shows what aligned coverage looks like: 2000+ traffic with 7 headlines mentioning it. The difference between 7 and 0 headline mentions across two similar sports searches suggests the press is selectively amplifying only part of the demand.
Sentiment shift Shift: Category mix is steady, but negativity is concentrated
Overall mood remains Neutral, but the negativity is not evenly distributed across categories. Crime (191 headlines, 6.6% share) posts an average sentiment of -0.3005 and Military (109 headlines, 3.8% share) averages -0.2723, making them strong negative pockets relative to the total score of -0.0423.
Technology is the other meaningful contributor because of volume: 512 headlines (17.8% share) at an average -0.0614. Even without being as negative as Crime or Military, its scale makes it a consistent drag on the aggregate.
World News, despite being the largest slice (1,235; 42.9%), is essentially flat on tone with an average sentiment of 0.0035, acting more like a stabilizer than a driver of the day’s negativity.
Deep dive Deepdive: The sentiment split is dominated by the middle and extremes
The sentiment distribution shows a large neutral center (1,171 headlines) surrounded by a heavier negative side than positive. Combining buckets, negative + very_negative totals 943 headlines (489 negative + 454 very_negative) versus 767 on the positive side (479 positive + 288 very_positive).
This skew is consistent with the overall score sitting slightly below zero (-0.0423) while still labeled Neutral (47.9%). In practice, today’s mood is “neutral overall” because neutrals are the plurality, but “negatively tilted” because the negative side outweighs the positive side by 176 headlines.
Context Context: Today is typical of the last two months’ range
Today’s -0.0423 sits close to the recent run of mildly negative readings, including Sep 22 (-0.0462) and Sep 18 (-0.0492). It is also near early-August levels like Aug 07 (-0.0427) and Aug 14 (-0.0424), suggesting the system is oscillating within a narrow band rather than shifting regimes.
Volume is also comparable to the most recent snapshot (2,881 today vs 2,883 on Sep 22), which makes today’s small sentiment uptick (+0.0039) more likely a real compositional change than a sampling artifact.
Signal vs noise
Signal — what actually matters
- “Sky vs Mystics” search demand with zero headline coverage It’s at 1000+ Google traffic but headline_coverage is 0, the clearest attention gap in today’s dataset.
- Mark Carney is both searched and heavily covered “mark carney” shows 2000+ traffic and 114 headlines mentioning it, far above other listed trends’ coverage.
- World News dominates the agenda but isn’t driving negativity World News is 1,235 headlines (42.9% share) with a near-flat avg sentiment of 0.0035.
- Crime and Military concentrate the day’s negative tone Crime averages -0.3005 across 191 headlines and Military averages -0.2723 across 109, much lower than the overall -0.0423.
- Technology volume makes it a meaningful mood lever Technology is 512 headlines (17.8% share) with avg sentiment -0.0614, large enough to pull the aggregate.
Noise — loud but low value
- Source-level sentiment extremes without broad volume Some high-sentiment sources have very low counts (e.g., edweek.org at 4 headlines, avg 0.2219; cbsnews.com at 3, avg 0.1702), making them unreliable as market-wide signals.
- Isolated headline outliers at the very top and bottom The most extreme single headlines reach +0.9325 and -0.9287, but the day’s overall reading is near-neutral (-0.0423) with 1,171 neutral items, so outliers overstate the average tone.
- Low-coverage sports/player queries as broader-news proxies Queries like “kyle pitts stats” (500+ traffic, 2 headline mentions) are real attention but narrow, and don’t map cleanly onto the 2,881-headline news mix.
Source leaderboard Who is framing the day brightest and darkest
Most positive outlets
Most negative outlets
Follow the story Best sources on today's trends
tempo vs sun 2000+ searches
- How to watch Tempo vs. Sun: TV channel and streaming options for September 24 The New York Times
- Why Tempo-Sun matchup could be the most significant game of the 2026 WNBA season Yahoo Sports
- Toronto takes on Connecticut after Harrison's 21-point game Daily Jefferson County Union
mark carney 2000+ searches
sky vs mystics 1000+ searches
spider verse 1000+ searches
- The Equalizer 3 TNTdrama.com
- Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse Trailer Leaked IMDb
- Spider-Verse 3's Trailer Unveils Its 6 Big Marvel Villains The Direct
wow forever patch notes 1000+ searches
- World of Warcraft: Forever's first patch will bring back the number one thing seasoned players missed from the MMO's past: storms PC Gamer
- World of Warcraft: Forever teases 'increased weather effects' in upcoming beta update Shacknews
- WoW: Forever Is Cranking Up The Weather And Players Are Losing Their Minds Kotaku
liberty vs coastal carolina 500+ searches
Watch list What we're tracking next
- Whether “sky vs mystics” gains any headline_coverage after 1000+ search traffic
- Whether Technology sentiment stays negative (currently -0.0614) while holding 17.8% share
- If Crime (avg -0.3005) expands beyond its current 6.6% share and pulls the overall score down
- If “travel warning” keeps rising in coverage (36 headlines) relative to its 500+ search traffic
- Whether the overall sentiment breaks out of the recent band around -0.03 to -0.05 (today -0.0423)
The extremes Today's most positive and most negative headlines
Most positive
- +0.93 Artie’s great wish was a Roosters-Dolphins grand final. This is the next best thing smh.com.au
- +0.90 Meghan Markle is enjoying a 'beautiful' reception on her UK return, her best friend claims, as 'loving' British public keep telling Duchess that she'd been 'missed' dailymail.co.uk
- +0.87 BeautyThe 10 best beauty deals at Nordstrom worth buying before its sale ends tomorrow theguardian.com
- +0.87 Trump touts 'truly great friendship' with China's Xi amid high-stakes state visit fivethirtyeight.com
- +0.87 Trump touts 'truly great friendship' with China's Xi amid high-stakes state visit abcnews.go.com
- +0.86 It Was Almost the Greatest Celebrity Story I’ve Ever Heard. It Was Too Good to Be True. slate.com
Most negative
- -0.93 Terrified residents in small Louisiana town say their lives are being ruined by mysterious sounds and vibrations damaging their homes and making them sick dailymail.co.uk
- -0.92 Shockingly light sentence for evil mom who left her seriously ill son to die while she went DRINKING and slept with a man dailymail.co.uk
- -0.92 Feral teens who leaped over McDonald's counter to attack staff are charged with HATE crime dailymail.co.uk
- -0.91 Miss Jamaica files bombshell lawsuit against Miss Universe after suffering 'life-altering traumatic brain injury' on stage dailymail.co.uk
- -0.91 Horror for Pittsburgh Penguins hockey star as his father is killed in bear attack dailymail.co.uk
- -0.90 Russian strikes kill 8 in Ukraine as the UN debates how to end the war abcnews.go.com
Pulse Index is built to separate what’s broadly published from what people are actively seeking: it tracks recurring keywords and topics across YouTube transcripts, RSS feeds, websites, and trending searches, then compares that attention to headline volume and sentiment. When a term like “sky vs mystics” shows 1000+ search traffic but 0 headline mentions, that’s the system doing its job: flagging an attention pocket that hasn’t been converted into mainstream coverage yet, while also quantifying where the day’s tone is actually coming from (e.g., category averages like Crime at -0.3005 and Technology at -0.0614).