How to use Pinterest Trends: a hands-on guide to the free tool

Updated October 22, 2026 · 6 min read

Before you start

Go to trends.pinterest.com and log in with a business account. Set the region at the top right first; it applies to almost everything on the page. If you sell to the United Kingdom, a United States graph will mislead you.

Everything on the site works the same way underneath: Pinterest counts searches or saves for a term, compares them with all activity in the same period, and draws the result on a 0 to 100 scale where 100 is the term's own peak. So a graph tells you when a term peaks and how it compares with another term on the same graph. It does not tell you how many people searched.

The keyword graph

Type a term in the search box and you get its graph with up to two years of history, a date range control underneath, and below that the demographics of who searches it and the popular pins for it.

Three things to read on every graph:

• Shape. A hump once a year is seasonal. A flat line is evergreen. A line climbing from the left is a rising trend.
• Timing. Find the month the hump starts to rise, not the month it peaks. That is when people begin searching and when your pins need to exist already.
• This year against last year. If the second year's hump is taller relative to the first, the term is growing.

Add up to three more terms with the compare option. Pinterest also suggests related trends under the graph; add the ones you would consider as pin titles and see which is biggest.

Search trends

This section lists trending keywords with a seasonality marker and the change over the last week, month and year. Click a keyword to open its graph.

Use it to find phrasing. Sort by the monthly change to see what is rising right now, and by the yearly change to see what has grown over a longer run. A term with a big weekly jump and a small yearly change is a spike, often news or a viral pin; a term with steady monthly and yearly growth is worth a post.

Trends in the spotlight

Spotlight trends are based on pin saves, grouped by interest. Pick your interest from the menu and hover or click a trend's chevron for detail.

Saves are a stronger signal than searches. People save what they plan to do, buy or make. If a term appears here and in search trends, it has both curiosity and intent behind it.

Shopping trends

Shopping trends show product categories that are growing, filterable by vertical, age, gender and ranking method. Each category page has performance history, predictions where Pinterest has them, top products, demographics, related products and related searches.

Even if you do not sell anything, the related searches on a category page are good pin keywords, and the age and gender split tells you who to write for.

Moments

Moments are seasonal and cultural events such as holidays, and each one has phase pages with guidance for that point in the event's cycle: before, during and after. This is the section to use for timing. Open the moment that matters to your niche and look at when its phases start, then plan pins for the phase before people are searching.

Audience trends

"Growing trends your audience loves" shows what your own engaged users and followers are into over the past 90 days, updated daily. It ignores the region filter and reflects your worldwide audience, and it only appears once your audience is large enough.

When it does appear, this is the most useful section on the site, because it is about the people who already engage with you. If a trend here overlaps with your niche, pin for it this week.

Editors' picks

Trends chosen by Pinterest's editors and analysts. Some are sponsored. Treat them as prompts, then confirm each one on the keyword graph before building content around it.

Three worked examples

A food blogger choosing a title. You have a sheet pan chicken recipe and three possible titles: "sheet pan chicken", "one pan chicken dinner" and "sheet pan chicken thighs". Compare all three on one graph. If "one pan chicken dinner" is highest and rising in your region, that phrase goes first in the title and the other two go in the description.

A decor account planning fall. Search "fall porch decor". The hump rises in early August and peaks in late September. Publish fall porch pins in July so they have engagement by August. Open the Fall moment for Pinterest's own phase dates.

A fitness creator checking a prediction. Pinterest Predicts named a trend and listed its search terms. Put the terms on a graph with your region set. If they are climbing from the right, make two pins now and watch them for a month. If they are flat, the trend has not reached your audience yet.

From Trends to a pin plan

Trends tells you what and when. It does not write the pin or measure demand in numbers. Take the terms you found and:

1. Run them through our keyword tool for Google volume, cost per click and twelve months of history, which gives you the counts that Trends hides.
2. Check the seasonal planner for the month each term peaks and the date to start pinning.
3. Put the winning term at the start of the title and in the first sentence of the description, then check the draft with Pin Doctor.

Limits to keep in mind

• Relative only. Two tiny terms can look identical to two huge ones.
• Region matters and audience trends ignore it.
• Some sections are in testing and may not show in your country.
• The tool shows searches on Pinterest, which skews toward planning and shopping. Use it alongside, not instead of, your own analytics.

A weekly Trends habit

Fifteen minutes a week is enough to stay ahead of your niche.

• Monday: search trends. Sort by monthly change, note anything in your niche that is rising, and open its graph to see whether the rise is a spike or a slope.
• Compare before you title. Any time you write a pin, put the two or three candidate phrasings on one graph and use the biggest one first.
• Check Moments monthly. Open the next two moments for your niche and note their phase dates.
• Audience trends when they appear. If a trend among your own audience overlaps with something you make, it jumps the queue.

Keep a running list of terms with the date you saw them. Over a year it becomes your own forecast, specific to your audience, which is more useful than any general report.

Reading demographics

Under each keyword graph Pinterest shows the age and gender split of the people searching it. Use it in two ways. If the split matches your readers, the term is safe. If it does not, you can still use the term, but the pin's image and wording should speak to the people who actually search it, not to your usual reader. A term that skews younger wants a different image from one that skews older, even when the topic is the same.

When Trends and your analytics disagree

Trends shows the whole platform. Your analytics show your account. When a term is rising on Trends but your pins for it get nothing, the usual causes are a weak image, a title without the term in the first 40 characters, or the wrong first board. Fix those before deciding the trend is not for you. When a term is flat on Trends but your pins for it do well, keep going: your audience is ahead of the platform, which is exactly where you want to be.

Where to go next

• Pinterest Predicts: how to read the report
• Pinterest seasonal content calendar
• Pinterest search volume: what you can see