Most searched keywords on Pinterest: how to find and use them

Updated October 21, 2026 · 6 min read

Why there is no official list

Pinterest keeps absolute search counts to itself. The tools it offers show popularity in other ways:

• Pinterest Trends shows how interest in a term rises and falls over up to two years, by region. The peak of each graph is set to 100, so you can compare two terms and see seasonality, but you never see a raw count.
• Pinterest Predicts is Pinterest's annual forecast, published each December, of themes it expects to grow in the coming year. It names trends and cites rising searches, but as a forecast, not a ranking.
• The search bar shows suggested searches as you type, and colored guided search tiles after you search. Both are drawn from what people actually search, and both are roughly ordered by popularity.

So the honest version of "most searched keywords on Pinterest" is a method, not a list. Here is the method, then the categories that come out on top year after year.

Where to look

1. Pinterest Trends, search trends section. Sign in with a business account, pick your region, and open the search trends section. It lists popular keywords with their weekly, monthly and yearly change, and flags seasonal ones. Sort by yearly change for what is growing, or by the default order for what is simply big. Filter to the interests that match your niche.

2. Suggested searches. Type one word from your niche into the Pinterest search bar and stop. The dropdown shows the searches people run most often that start with that word. Try the word with "ideas", "easy", "diy", "aesthetic" and a season after it, and you will have most of the big searches in the niche within a few minutes.

3. Guided search tiles. Run the search and look at the row of colored tiles under the search box. Each tile is a popular way people narrow that search. "Living room" gives you tiles like "small", "modern", "cozy" and "apartment". Those refinements are often better targets than the main term, because they describe a specific pin.

4. Pinterest Predicts. Read the current edition on Pinterest's business site each December. The trends are broad and a little playful, but each one names concrete searches you can build pins around months before they peak.

5. A keyword tool for scale. Our keyword tool takes a seed term, returns suggestions and shows Google search volume beside them. The volume is Google's, not Pinterest's, but it is a reliable guide to how much demand a topic has overall, and it lets you compare hundreds of terms at once instead of typing them one by one.

The categories that stay popular

These categories have been at the top of Pinterest for years. The example searches are the kind of practical, specific phrases that dominate each one. They are examples of the pattern, not ranked lists.

Three patterns are worth noticing. The biggest searches are about doing something: decorating a room, cooking a meal, dressing for an event. Most of them have a qualifier such as "easy", "small", "diy" or "aesthetic" attached. And many of them are seasonal, which is where the next section comes in.

When each category peaks

Pinterest users plan ahead, so searches for an occasion start well before it. The exact lead time varies, but the pattern below repeats every year. Use Pinterest Trends to confirm the timing for your own region.

The lesson is that "most searched" depends on the date. A Halloween costume pin published in October arrives after the peak. The same pin published in July has months to build saves before the searches arrive. The trending keywords guide goes deeper on timing.

Turning a popular term into a pin that can rank

Big terms are crowded. The way in is to take a popular search and add the detail that describes your pin.

Start broad, then narrow. "Living room ideas" is the category. Guided search tiles and suggested searches give you "small living room ideas", "cozy living room ideas on a budget", "living room ideas with sectional". Pick the one that matches what you actually have.

Write the pin for that exact phrase. Put it in the title, within 100 characters. Use it in the first sentence of the description and add two or three related phrases in normal sentences, up to 800 characters. Put the phrase in the alt text too. Choose up to 10 tagged topics that fit.

Make the image say the same thing. Pinterest reads the text in your image. A clear overlay with the phrase on a 2:3 image, 1000 by 1500 pixels, confirms the topic and helps the person scrolling decide to click.

Save it to a board named for the topic. The board name and description are attached to every pin on it. "Small living room ideas" as a board name does more than "Home".

Publish before the peak. For seasonal terms, aim to have pins live and collecting saves well ahead of when searches climb.

Then let the pin work. Pinterest keeps surfacing a pin for as long as people engage with it, so the pins you publish for this year's popular searches can still bring traffic next year.

Where to go next

• Pinterest SEO: how search works and how to get your pins into it
• Pinterest search volume: what you can and cannot see
• How to find trending keywords on Pinterest