Systems and methods provide for analyzing a group of online articles to identify relevant and popular topics. Text from each online is analyzed to identify topics relevant to each online article and to generate a relevance score for each topic and each online article. The topics are scored as a function of the relevance scores and visitor metrics for the online articles. The visitor metrics may include all visitors or only visitors within a particular visitor segment. The most relevant and popular topics are identified based on the scored topics. In some embodiments, the online articles are further analyzed to identify terms used in the online articles that are important to each topic. Further embodiments analyze the online articles to determine the lifespan of topics and terms, reflecting the popularity of topics and terms over time intervals.