Compiling documents into a timeline per event

Representative embodiments disclose mechanisms to compile documents into a timeline document that tracks the evolution of a topic over time. Social media documents can be used to identify importance or popularity of linked documents (i.e., documents shared by social media in a post, tweet, etc.). A collection of social media documents is analyzed and used to identify a series of n-grams and a ranked list of linked documents. A subset of the ranked list is selected based upon similarity to the series of n-grams. The subset is then summarized and captured, along with underlying supporting data, into an entry of a timeline document. Related entries in different timeline documents can be linked to create a pivot point that allows a user to jump from one timeline to another. Timeline documents can be made available as part of a search performed by a query system.