The wrong shape
The wrong shape is a single-channel spike. Traffic jumped on one page. Replies came in on one campaign. A ranking moved on one keyword. Each of these is a data point. None of them, on their own, is a signal worth acting on.
The reason is that any given channel produces false positives constantly. A ranking moves because Google shuffles. A campaign spikes because a sender warmed up. Traffic jumps because a blog got a mention. Most spikes reverse within a fortnight.
“Not every good week is a real trend. Here's the shape of the ones that are.”
The right shape
A real growth signal has three characteristics: it's durable across at least a fortnight, it shows up on more than one channel, and it points at a specific move you could make this week if you noticed it.
Durability rules out the noise. Cross-channel agreement rules out the false positive from a single system. Actionability rules out the signals that are technically real but nobody cares about.
The Growth Opportunities module doesn't surface every anomaly — it only surfaces the ones that pass the three-signal test. Which is why the list is short. Which is why teams actually work through it.
