Top Google Searches (May 2026)

In this article, you’ll find the 100 most searched queries on Google in the United States and worldwide, refreshed with May 2026 data. You’ll also see what changed since January, which terms quietly broke into the top 50, and step-by-step methods to find the top searches for any country, any niche, and any AI engine.

The volumes below come from Google’s own ad inventory through DataForSEO, rounded into Google’s standard volume tiers. A few keywords inside the same tier show identical numbers, so treat the rank order as the signal and the absolute number as a directional band.

As of May 2026, the most searched query on Google in the US is “youtube” with around 226 million monthly searches. The next four are “amazon,” “chatgpt,” “google,” and “weather.” A year ago, “chatgpt” was nowhere near the top three. Today it is the third most searched query in the US and the second most searched query worldwide.

Top 100 Google searches in the United States

We removed adult and explicit queries from this list. Volumes are average monthly searches across the US in the trailing 12 months.

Top 100 Google searches worldwide

The global list looks different from the US list for three reasons. Non-English search makes up the majority of global volume, which is why Spanish (“clima,” “traductor”), Portuguese (“tradutor”), Hindi (“satta king,” “sarkari result”), Vietnamese (“xsmn,” “xsmb”), and Bahasa (“cuaca”) queries appear high. WhatsApp Web and Hotmail dominate in regions where iMessage and Gmail do not. And cricket alone pushes “cricket” and “ind vs aus” into the top 75.

What changed since January 2026

Five months is usually too short to move the top 100. This year is the exception.

ChatGPT is now bigger than Google in the US. “Chatgpt” plus “chat gpt” plus “gpt” combined for around 161 million US searches in May, narrowly above the 124 million for “google” itself. A year ago, “chatgpt” did not crack the top 5. According to kwrds.ai, the term grew over 121% year-over-year, ahead of every other keyword in the top 50.

Other AI assistants have followed. “Gemini” entered the US top 50 at rank 47 with 16.6 million monthly searches. Worldwide it sits at rank 16 with 277 million. “Copilot,” “deepseek,” “perplexity,” “grok,” and “claude” have all become standalone top-100 global keywords.

Branded utility queries are flat. “Youtube,” “amazon,” “facebook,” “gmail,” and “wordle” held their positions. People are not using AI to replace navigation. They are using AI to replace the next click after the navigation.

Sports and seasonality bend the May list. May covers the NBA Conference Finals, the Champions League final, the IPL final, the Kentucky Derby, the Met Gala, Mother’s Day, and Cannes. That is why “nba,” “lakers,” “dodgers,” “mlb,” and “champions league” sit higher than they would in February. Watch for them to recede after the NBA Finals end in June.

Local intent is climbing. “Restaurants near me” jumped to rank 7 in the US with 101 million searches, ahead of “gmail.” “Food near me” sits at rank 9. Local searches now occupy two of the top 10 slots, a position they did not hold a year ago.

How to find the top Google searches in any country

The Ahrefs article that inspired this one points users at Keywords Explorer. That works if you have an Ahrefs seat. If you do not, here are three free or near-free methods that get the same answer.

Method 1: Use Google Trends

Open trends.google.com, select the country from the top-right dropdown, and click Trending Now in the left menu. You will see real-time queries with relative interest scores and start times.

The limitation is that Google Trends shows relative interest, not absolute volume. Use it for what is moving, not how big it is.

Method 2: Use the Analyze AI Keyword Generator

Our Keyword Generator gives you a country-level keyword list with monthly search volume in one query. Type a seed term, pick the country, and the tool returns the highest-volume related queries from Google’s own data.

For a fully blank country-wide top list, pair it with our SERP Checker and Keyword Difficulty Checker to qualify which queries you can realistically compete for.

Method 3: Use DataForSEO directly

If you want raw monthly volume numbers like the ones in the tables above, the cleanest path is DataForSEO’s Google Ads Search Volume endpoint. One API call returns the past 12-month average for up to 1,000 keywords at any country and language for roughly half a cent. We used it to build the May 2026 numbers in this article.

How to find the top Google searches in your niche

Top-100 lists like this one are useful for context, but they will not tell you what an HVAC contractor in Phoenix should be writing about. For that, you need the top searches inside your topic.

Step 1: Pick a seed term

Start with the broadest term that describes your category. For an HVAC business, that is “hvac.” For a Hotjar competitor, “session recording.” For a B2B newsletter operator, “marketing newsletter.”

Step 2: Expand the seed into a full keyword universe

Drop the seed into our Keyword Generator and our Bing Keyword Tool. Both return ranked lists of related queries with monthly volumes. Bing data surfaces queries Google does not always show in its public planner.

For YouTube and Amazon-specific queries, use our YouTube Keyword Tool and Amazon Keyword Tool.

Step 3: Sort by what you can actually win

Volume alone is misleading. The top result on any list is usually the most competitive. Run the candidates through our Keyword Difficulty Checker to filter out anything above your domain’s authority threshold, then run the survivors through SERP Checker to see who you would be competing against.

For a deeper walk-through, see our guide on SEO keywords and the 9 keyword research tools we recommend.

Step 4: Check what Google is already answering itself

For every keyword you shortlist, look at the SERP. If an AI Overview already answers the question and the People Also Ask box covers every reasonable follow-up, you may be writing for impressions, not clicks. Our People Also Ask guide shows how to read those signals before you invest in the article.

How to find the top searches on AI engines

This is the section the Ahrefs article does not have, and it is the section that matters for the next 12 months.

We do not believe AI search is replacing Google. Both Animalz and Grow and Convert have shown that pages ranking on page one of Google get cited 67% of the time in ChatGPT and 77% of the time in Perplexity. Search engine visibility is the input. AI visibility is the output. You need both.

The question is no longer “what are people searching on Google.” It is “what are people asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot about my category.” Volume on those engines is invisible to Google Trends, Keyword Planner, and DataForSEO. You need a different stack.

Step 1: Get a baseline of what AI engines are already saying about your space

Open Analyze AI’s Prompt Discovery module. Enter your category or seed term and the tool returns the highest-frequency prompts that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude are answering for your space, ranked by mention volume across engines.

This is the AI-engine equivalent of the table at the top of this article. Where Google ranks queries by typed search volume, Analyze AI ranks prompts by how often AI engines surface them when answering questions in your category. More on the Prompt Discovery feature page.

Step 2: Run an ad-hoc search to test specific prompts

To see what every major engine says when asked a specific question right now, our AI Search Explorer runs the same prompt across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude in one shot and returns full responses with citations.

Use this to pressure-test the queries from Step 1, to check how AI engines describe your brand, and to see who they cite when they answer.

Step 3: See which sources AI engines are citing in your category

Once you know which prompts matter, the Citation Analytics view shows the domains AI engines pull from when they answer those prompts. This is your real competitor list for AI visibility, and it almost never matches your Google SERP competitor list.

If a publication or competitor shows up across most of your tracked prompts, study what they have on the page. That is the format AI engines have decided is the canonical answer for your category.

Step 4: Find the prompts your competitors win and you do not

Open Competitor Intelligence and add your direct rivals. The tool shows every prompt where a competitor is cited and your brand is not. These gaps are the AI-search equivalent of competitor keyword gap reports, and they are a direct route to net-new visibility.

For more on how to read that gap and act on it, our guide on outranking competitors in AI search walks through what we have learned from analyzing 65,000 citations.

Step 5: Track everything in one place over time

The Overview dashboard ties Google rank, AI mention share, citation count, and the prompts that drive both into a single view, so you can see whether your AI visibility moves in lockstep with your SEO work or in the opposite direction.

You can also subscribe to Weekly Email Digests so the gaps and wins land in your inbox every Monday without you logging in.

Your turn

The point of a list like this is not to memorize the top 100. It is to use the list to ask better questions about your own category.

Three to start with. What share of the queries in your niche are now answered by an AI Overview before the user clicks anything? What share of the prompts ChatGPT and Perplexity answer in your category cite your domain at all? And which competitor is winning the prompts you are not even tracking yet?

You can answer the first with our SERP Checker, the second with Prompt Discovery, and the third with Competitor Intelligence. Pick the one that scares you the most and start there.