research: external Pokémon popularity data sources

[hjacque]

Goal

Identify and integrate reliable external signals for Pokémon-level popularity to enrich the Pokémon Popularity Score (#89). Internal signals (PSA grading volume, price premium, eBay sold frequency) are derivable from existing or planned data — this issue covers the external signal layer.

Candidate sources

Source	Signal	Feasibility
Pokémon GO	Usage / encounter rates per Pokémon	Unclear — no official public API; fan-maintained datasets may exist
Competitive play	Tournament usage frequency (Smogon, VGC rankings)	Partially available via community-maintained data (Pikalytics, Limitless)
Fan rankings	Popularity polls (Bulbapedia annual surveys, Reddit polls)	Available as static snapshots; not real-time
Search volume	Google Trends per Pokémon name	Accessible via Google Trends API or scraping
Social media	Mentions / engagement on X, Reddit, TikTok	Possible but noisy and access-dependent

Deliverable

A recommendation of 1–2 sources that are:

1. Reliable and reasonably stable (not scraped from a site likely to break)
2. Updatable on a recurring schedule (weekly or monthly)
3. Meaningfully correlated with card price premium (to be validated once eBay sold data is available via feat: eBay sold listings as a Price Source #84)

Blocked by

• Nothing — can be researched independently

Blocks

• feat: Pokémon popularity score #89 — Pokémon popularity score (external signal component)