When an e-retailer shows an item as "trending Now", should they be believed?

I think it’s most likely a bullshit flag they set which may or may not mean anything other than they want to promote certain things for whatever reasons.

I could maybe believe Newegg is referring to something at least semi-real and semi-related to the idea of “trending”, when they do that, and I’d give a slightly lower chance that BestBuy is. It could be based on sales, or just hits, but it also might just be that someone in their sales/marketing team is decided what to tag as a “best seller” or whatever, maybe more based on what they have a good stock of and are more anxious to sell. Or even, someone paid them to promote those items that way. Or some combination of the above.

The “now” part is more dubious to me, particularly since, as you say, I don’t expect it changes more often than every few days at best.

But I don’t know. Here, let’s try a little search . . . hmm, I’m not finding any discussion of it.

I think it’s a ploy to get someone with a shopping addiction to purchase from their website rather than another.

I suppose it works for them, because it certainly is a habit many retail businesses use.

That is one of those words/phrases that I simply do not see or hear. I have a built-in BS detector.

Here’s what my company’s e-commerce vendor’s support page says:

Displaying featured Products is a feature that allows you to highlight chosen products on specific pages (including the homepage) of the website. These products will be showcased in a section labeled ‘Trending Products’ and will be clearly visible to customers when viewing the pages they are displayed on.

Whether you’re highlighting a discounted item to turn over excess inventory, or drawing attention to new items you’ve just started carrying, this is a great feature to promote specific items you want to increase traffic to!

@kevbo1 so in your company, the items aren’t trending at all. They’re being pushed by the sales department.

We don’t use the feature (we’re a nonprofit and there’s a lot of features we don’t use), but that’s the instruction provided by our e-commerce vendor.