If you were looking for more buzz, here you go: Conduit has announced a new Community Trends index, available at http://www.conduit.com/community/communitytrends/ . Conduit calls itself a “platform for building online communities via community toolbars” and claims over twelve million users. Trends here are based on searches done across communities.

It looks like the trends here are monthly, and include several different categories including sports (rugby is very popular), Web games, pets, and so on. You’re not going to find items that have just turned up in popular culture or on the news page, but I was surprised at some of the things I DID find here (rugby?) and I certainly did find some terms that were unfamiliar (mostly on the Web Games list.)

In addition to the regular trends, this site will also provide monthly vertical highlights and show what’s popular there. This time Green Earth communities and Al Gore came out on top along with words like “climate”, “dolphins,” and “Kyoto protocol”.