This could really benefit from using some sort of a moving average to smooth out these minor fluctuations. The long-term trend for C++ is clearly downward [0],

This could really benefit from using some sort of a moving average to smooth out these minor fluctuations. The long-term trend for C++ is clearly downward [0], yet a small increase from the previous month becomes a news headline. But you're also right that some of the larger trends are suspect as well. The big dip in C and Java in 2016-2017 could just as easily be due (at least in part) to a change in Google's search algorithm. The index doesn't solely rely on Google, but it certainly makes up a large part of the index [1]. There's no perfect metric for any of this, but making announcements about 1-month changes to a noisy estimate is not particularly convincing. [0] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/cplusplus/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/cplusplus/ [1] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programming-languages-definition/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programming-languages-defi...