Track trending news and forum topics automatically in Google Sheets

Scrapes forum and news pages on a schedule, uses AI to pull out key details, and logs them in Google Sheets.

How the work actually flows

A straight line. Runs once per each forum or news page.

Pattern: Sequence (1) ยท Multiple Instances without Synchronization (12)

flowchart TD trig(["scheduled site scrape"]):::trigtime s0[["visit target pages"]]:::mi s1["pull raw page content"]:::task s2["AI extracts key details"]:::svc s3[("log to spreadsheet")]:::store trig --> s0 s0 --> s1 s1 --> s2 s2 --> s3 out[/"trending topics logged"/]:::out pay{{"always know what's trending"}}:::pay s3 --> out out --> pay classDef task fill:#e7f6fe,stroke:#34b8f0,color:#2c2a29 classDef svc fill:#f6f8fa,stroke:#7c8795,color:#2c2a29 classDef mi fill:#e7f6fe,stroke:#0079a8,color:#2c2a29,stroke-width:2px classDef human fill:#fff,stroke:#0079a8,color:#0079a8 classDef store fill:#f6f8fa,stroke:#0079a8,color:#2c2a29 classDef trig fill:#00a4eb,stroke:#0079a8,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef trigtime fill:#00a4eb,stroke:#0079a8,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef trigdata fill:#8ad4f5,stroke:#0079a8,color:#06314c,font-weight:bold classDef gate fill:#fff,stroke:#e8a23d,color:#6b4708,font-weight:bold classDef out fill:#1f9d6b,stroke:#167a53,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef pay fill:#06314c,stroke:#021f33,color:#fff
Starts itA stepAn outside serviceRuns once per itemA record or sheetResultPayoff
Build size
Advanced

A larger build with multiple systems, AI reasoning, and custom rules.

Business functions
Spreadsheet & Database OpsWeb Scraping & Data CollectionResearch & Market Intelligence
Connects
Google SheetsGoogle Gemini

The problem it solves

Manually checking forums and news sites for what's trending eats up hours you don't have, and it's easy to miss a story until it's old news. Copying titles, links, and stats into a spreadsheet by hand is tedious and error-prone.

Who it fits

A researcher, marketer, or analyst who needs to track trending topics across specific websites.

How it works

  1. On a set schedule, the system visits the forum or news pages you specify
  2. Raw page content is pulled from each site
  3. AI reads the content and pulls out titles, links, authors, and engagement stats
  4. Each new item is logged or updated in a Google Sheet
What you get

Trending topics tracked across your sites

You get a running log of trending topics from the forums and news sites you care about, updated automatically on schedule.

What you get

An up-to-date Google Sheet of trending stories with titles, links, authors, and engagement data.

What you need

A Google Sheets account, a Google Gemini API key, and a web scraping API account.

We can build this. But should you?

The hard question is not how to build it. It is whether this is the right thing to build first.

That is what a Fractional Chief AI Officer figures out with you, before anyone writes a line of code.

Let's Talk Strategy

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