Track review topic trends
How do I read Topic Trends without misreading it?
Topic Trends turns your review text into themes, such as gentle care, wait time or parking, and shows how often each comes up over time. The counter at the top right tells you how much is ready: 50/50 analyzed means every review at this location has been read for topics.
Open it from Reviews → Topic Trends for one location.
Key facts
| Where it lives | Reviews → Topic Trends for one location. The all-locations view shows a read-only roll-up |
| What it reads | Public directory reviews for the location. Private feedback is not included |
| How topics are made | Synup's AI reads each review. New reviews are tagged automatically after each review sync |
| What you need | Reviews that have been synced and analyzed. No plan add-on |
| Recent windows | Rising, Declining, Emerging, Resolved / faded and Δ 90d compare the last 90 days with the 90 days before |
| Longer view | The grid shows 12 months, and Compare periods lets you choose two ranges |
Why this matters
A star average tells you how you are doing. Topics tell you why, and what is changing. A high mention count with a low average rating is the combination worth acting on: the thing customers talk about most is also the thing dragging your rating down.
Steps
Open Reviews, pick a location, then Topic Trends. Check the counter. If it is not complete, the figures describe only the reviews analyzed so far.
Start with All topics. It ranks every theme by Mentions (all time), with the Sentiment split, the Avg rating of the reviews that mention it, Δ 90d (last 90 days against the 90 before) and a six-month trend line.
Read the Rising, Declining, Emerging and Resolved / faded cards underneath. They all compare the last 90 days with the 90 days before that.
Use the Topics × time grid to see when a theme appears. Each cell is one month, coloured by sentiment, with its mention count. Switch between 6mo and 12mo.
Select a cell or a topic to read the reviews behind it (see below).
To compare two stretches yourself, use Compare periods and choose the months for A and B.
Reading Topics × time
The grid is the most useful thing on the page, because it shows when rather than just how much. Read left to right along one topic to see whether it is a running theme or a single moment. In the grid above, gentle care appears in most months, wait time appears in December and then only in October and November, and feeling rushed shows up in May and July and then stops.
Is a topic really rising or falling?
The page uses more than one time window, and it is worth knowing which is which.
The ninety-day windows
What changed, Δ 90d, Rising, Declining, Emerging and Resolved / faded compare the last 90 days with the 90 days before that.
The twelve-month grid
Topics × time shows each month of the last year, and Over time plots one topic across the same months.
Compare periods
You choose the months. It opens with the first six months of the year view against the last six.
What changed is a short written summary that Synup generates and keeps. It describes the last 90 days against the 90 days before, but it is updated when topics are analyzed, so it can lag behind the live cards. If the summary and a card disagree, trust the card and the grid, which are calculated from the reviews each time you open the page.
The two 90-day windows together cover about six months. A theme last mentioned three or four months ago falls in the earlier window, so it appears under Declining and, once it has stopped completely, under Resolved / faded (it needs at least two earlier mentions to count). It is not absent from the page. Only mentions older than about six months drop out of those cards, though they remain in the grid and in Compare periods.
One more caution on a small location: a topic mentioned once will still appear in Rising or Emerging, because one is more than zero. Check the count before you treat it as a trend.
Read the reviews behind a topic
Select a cell in the grid, a topic in All topics, a topic in a Rising or Declining card, or Read reviews about under the Over time chart. A panel opens on the right headed Reviews mentioning and the topic name. It lists that topic's reviews grouped by month, newest first, each with the reviewer, rating, review site, age and whether that topic was positive, neutral or negative in the review. If you selected a cell, it opens at that month. Open All Reviews at the bottom takes you to the review list.
Do this before acting on anything. It is the difference between guests mention parking and knowing whether they are praising it or complaining about it.
In the all-locations roll-up, the grid cells are summaries across several locations and do not open this panel. Pick a location first when you need the reviews behind a topic.
Managing and re-analyzing topics
Manage topics is where you curate the list Synup tags against. You can add your own topics (up to 10, each at least 3 characters) and hide topics you do not want. Adding a topic tags your existing reviews for it in the background. Re-analyze re-reads every review at the location and rewrites its topics. It is not a refresh button, so run it when reviews have arrived that the counter says are not analyzed, rather than to try to change a result you disagree with.
If the counter says every review is analyzed but no topics appear at all, run Re-analyze once. If it is still empty, contact support.
What you'll see when it's done
- A counter showing all reviews analyzed, a ranked topic list, a grid of months and the four movement cards. Opening a topic shows the reviews behind it.
Watch out for
- Counts are mentions, not reviews. One review can mention several topics.
- Averages belong to the topic. The Avg is the rating of the reviews that mention that theme, not of the location.
- A location with few reviews can mislead. One or two mentions are enough to move a card, so read the counts.
Questions people ask
Are these the same as the chips on the reviews page?
No, and it is worth keeping them apart. What customers are talking about on the review list and in Review Analytics shows keywords pulled from recent reviews. Topic Trends works from topics stored against each review, which is what lets it compare one period with another.
Why does a topic show an average rating of 5.0 when I know we have complaints?
The average belongs to the reviews mentioning that topic, not to the location. A theme praised in your best reviews will read 5.0 even when the location has weaker ones about something else.
What happens when I click a topic or a cell?
In the current product it opens the Reviews mentioning panel described above, so you can read the reviews yourself.