Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar has topped the popularity charts after the release of his powerful social drama PadMan. But heartthrob Ranveer Singh, who held the No. 1 position the week before that for his maniacal performance in the period drama Padmaavat, plunged to the fifth position with Akshay’s ascendance. In the second, third and fourth positions are Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan respectively.

The statistics for these rankings were supplied to PeepingMoon.com by Score Trends, a US-based media-tech startup. “We collect data from over 600 news sources across 14 languages in India to analyse the media. This is done from Thursday to Thursday,” explained Ashwani Kaul, co-founder of Score Trends. “Our sources include Facebook, Twitter, print publications, viral news on social media, broadcast and digital platforms. Various sophisticated algorithms help us to process this data and arrive at the rankings of Bollywood stars.”

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According to Score Trends, Akshay who was in the third position for the period February 1 to 8, with a score of 57.67 points, shot up to 94.50 points for February 8 to 15, registering a growth of 36.83 points. And Ranveer, who was riding high at No. 1 position for February 1 to 8 with 78.11 points, fell to fifth position with a score of 37.49 points – a loss of 40.62 points.

Analysing the spike and dip in rankings, Score Trends said what worked in Akshay’s favour was his image as the country’s Goodwill Ambassador after he made commercial mainstream Bollywood films with a social cause like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and PadMan. The actor also scored brownie points by spearheading initiatives like ‘Bharat ke Veer’ in which civilians can contribute directly to bereaved families of defence personnel killed in wars and acts of terrorism.

But it was Akshay’s soaring popularity on Facebook, Twitter, viral news, in newspapers and digital sites before PadMan’s release, the put him at the No. 1 slot for February 8 to 15. Whereas Amitabh Bachchan, who is in the second position for the period February 8 to 15 with 65.46 points, was at No. 4 for February 1 to 8 with 51.36 points. The veteran actor registered a growth of 14.1 points to climb up two spots. And the reason for his rising graph on all the same media platforms is the announcement of his forthcoming film Jhund.

Ashwani Kaul said, “Automated algorithms provide an unbiased score to each celebrity based on numerous factors. Cutting edge technologies are used to clean and associate data with the right person. For instance, ‘Salman Khan’ the actor as against, say, a ‘Salman Khan’ from some Khan Academy. The summarised data then passes through various quality controls which include human verification of each of the parameters every week before the scores are published.”