Top Trending Topics (May 2026)

In this article, you’ll see what is trending in the US right now in May 2026, why each topic is climbing, how to find trends in your own niche for SEO, and how to track the same waves inside AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot.

The list was compiled from Google Trends, Pinterest Trends, public newsroom signals, social listening on Reddit and X, and the surge data inside our own keyword research tools. We removed misspellings, NSFW noise, and “near me” location dust that pads most trending lists.

The 50 trending topics in the US right now

Culture and entertainment

The Met Gala on May 4 dominated almost every entertainment search this week. The “Costume Art” theme produced the most viral red carpet of the year and pulled cumulative search interest above any other event in the calendar.

Sports

NBA playoffs plus the buildup to the FIFA World Cup is producing one of the most concentrated sports search peaks of the year.

Brand campaigns and product launches

May is one of the heaviest brand campaign months of the year. The combination of Mother’s Day, summer launches, and post-Met Gala fashion buzz pulls huge non-evergreen volume.

News, politics, and people

Tech and AI

This is where SEO and AI search overlap most clearly. Every topic below is hot in Google and inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini answers.

Seasonal and recurring

These topics surge every May. If you sell anything in these categories, the trend window is open right now. The standouts are Mother’s Day 2026 (May 10), Memorial Day weekend (May 25), summer travel deals, garden and landscaping, allergies and pollen counts, wedding venues, and iced coffee recipes.

Niche and emerging

Smaller in volume but climbing fast and easier to rank for than head terms. The standouts are Connections (NYT puzzle), Wordle today, Crushable by Candy Crush, Roblox new games, and the Yellowstone spinoff universe.

The four types of trending topics (and why the difference matters)

A trend is not one thing. Treating every spike the same way is the fastest path to wasted content effort. Here is the framework we use internally at Analyze AI.

Spike trends are short, sharp, and event-driven. Think of the Met Gala, a celebrity scandal, or a single product launch. They peak inside 72 hours and decay fast. The right format is a quick news piece, a recap, or a fast-turn opinion. If you take three weeks to publish, you missed it.

Seasonal trends are predictable and recurring. Mother’s Day, the Kentucky Derby, Black Friday, and tax season all sit here. They reward planning. The right format is an evergreen page that you republish and update each year, so you compound authority over time. Our guide on SEO content strategy covers the mechanics of seasonal refreshes.

Sustained trends keep showing up in new searches, new use cases, and new categories. ChatGPT, AI search, and llms.txt all qualify. They reward depth. The right format is a pillar page or content hub that grows with the topic.

Niche trends are small in absolute volume but climb fast inside a specific category. The keyword generator and keyword difficulty checker help you find these before competitors do.

The mistake most teams make is treating spike trends like sustained trends. You write a 3,000-word pillar page on a 72-hour story, and by the time it ships, the wave is gone.

How to find trending topics in your niche for SEO

Trending data is everywhere. The hard part is filtering for trends that fit your audience, your authority, and your business model. Here is the workflow we recommend.

Step 1: Start with Google Trends

Google Trends is the fastest way to confirm a topic is actually rising. Go to trends.google.com, enter your seed keyword, and look at the curve over the last 30 and 90 days.

The most useful section is “Related queries” with the “Rising” filter applied. Breakout terms show up here first, often with growth percentages over 5,000 percent.

Google Trends also has a Trending Now page that refreshes every 10 minutes.

Step 2: Layer in keyword tool growth filters

Google Trends shows you the curve. A keyword tool gives you the volume number you need to prioritize.

In Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report and sort by the Growth column. You can switch between 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month growth windows.

In Semrush, the equivalent is the Keyword Magic Tool with the “Trends” filter. Our SERP checker and keyword rank checker give you a fast read on whether the SERP is winnable.

What you want is a keyword with rising volume, low to medium difficulty, and a SERP without an entrenched giant ranking number one for years.

Step 3: Check community signals on Reddit and X

Search volume is a lagging indicator. Communities are a leading indicator. A topic that catches fire on Reddit or X today shows up in Google Trends two weeks later.

Monitor the subreddits and X lists where your target audience hangs out. When the same question gets repeated three weeks in a row, that is a trending topic with no Google data yet.

Step 4: Validate the SERP intent

Before you commit to writing, paste the keyword into Google and read the top five results. Are they listicles, tutorials, news pieces, product pages, or local results? If you publish the wrong format, you will not rank no matter how good the content is. Our SERP checker gives you the top results, content types, and SERP features in one view.

How to find trending topics in AI search

This is where the largest opportunity sits in 2026. AI engines reward freshness more than Google. Ahrefs research on 17 million citations found that URLs cited by AI assistants are 25.7 percent fresher than URLs in the SERPs, with ChatGPT showing the strongest recency bias. ChatGPT even has an internal “URL_freshness_score” that pushes recent content up the ranking inside its retrieval system.

In practice, if you publish on a trending topic, you can win in ChatGPT and Perplexity faster than in Google. The workflow inside Analyze AI mirrors the SEO one above, but with AI engine signals instead of search volume.

Step 1: See which prompts are surging in your category

Inside Analyze AI, the Prompt Discovery feature surfaces the prompts your audience is actually asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot. The Suggested Prompts view ranks these by frequency and growth.

You can also test any prompt on demand to see who appears in the answer right now and what the engines are pulling.

This is the AI search equivalent of Google Trends “Related queries.” You learn the actual questions, in natural language, that your audience is putting into the engines this week. More on this workflow in our guide to tracking AI search rivals.

Step 2: Find the prompts where competitors win and you do not

The Competitor Intelligence view shows you the AI prompts where your rivals get cited and your brand does not. Each gap is a topic you can attack with a single piece of content.

This is the cleanest signal you will get for a trending content opportunity. The competitor already validated that the prompt has volume and that AI engines have an answer pattern. You just need to publish something better.

Step 3: Spot the sources AI engines are citing right now

The Citation Analytics dashboard shows every URL and domain that AI engines reference when answering questions in your category, broken down by content type and citation count.

Look for two things. First, which sources dominate. If G2 and Reddit dominate your category, your strategy probably needs review pages and Reddit-style breakdowns. Second, which sources have momentum. A site that was getting 5 citations a month and is now getting 30 has cracked something. Reverse-engineer their angle.

Step 4: Identify the pages already pulling AI traffic and double down

The AI Traffic Analytics view ties AI visibility to actual sessions on your site. You see which pages convert AI search visitors, broken down by engine.

Click into the visitor list and you can see the exact landing pages, the engine that referred each visit, and the session behavior.

Pages that already pull AI traffic are pages where your content shape, your sources, and your entity coverage are working. Find the trending topics adjacent to those wins and publish more in the same shape. For more on this, see how to rank on ChatGPT and our guide to ranking on Perplexity AI.

How to decide which trending topics are worth writing about

Not every trend deserves a piece of content. Use these four checks before you commit a writer.

Sustained signal. Pull the topic into Google Trends and look at the 30 and 90-day curve. A single spike with no follow-up means the wave is already cresting. A stair-step of rising baselines means you are early enough to compound.

Audience fit. Ask whether the searcher overlaps with the people who buy from you. If the answer is no, you will get traffic that bounces and never converts.

Intent match. Read the top five Google results and the top three answers in ChatGPT and Perplexity. If both surface tutorials and your draft is a news piece, you are publishing the wrong format.

Business value. Can the topic lead to a product, a lead magnet, a demo, or a service conversation? If the connection is forced, the page will rank but never produce pipeline. This is the same lesson Grow and Convert covers in pain point SEO.

If a topic clears all four, write it. If it clears three, write a short post. If it clears two or fewer, skip it.

How to ship a trending topic article that ranks in both SEO and AI search

Once you have picked the topic, the production workflow looks like this.

Start with a research and outline pass that pulls the top three SEO results, the top three AI answers, and the citation patterns inside Analyze AI’s Discover dashboard. The AI Content Writer runs this step automatically, gives you a structured outline, and flags angles your competitors missed.

Draft the article in your usual editor or in the Content Writer itself. Cover the entities AI engines expect to see, link to the sources they already cite, and add at least one piece of original analysis or data no other page on the topic has. This is what Animalz calls information gain, and it is the difference between content that ranks and content that gets ignored.

Once the draft is ready, run it through the AI Content Optimizer. It scores the page against the SERP and against the AI engines, then gives line-by-line suggestions on what to add, cut, or rewrite.

Publish, then track movement weekly. SEO traction tends to show up over six to twelve weeks. AI search traction often shows up inside two weeks because of the freshness bias.

The takeaway

Trending topics are the cheapest content fuel you will find. The data is free, the audience is already searching, and the SERPs and AI answers are still settling.

The teams that win are not the ones with the longest list. They are the ones who categorize trends correctly, ship in the right format for the right channel, and close the loop from publish to citation to visitor to pipeline.

To see what is trending in your category right now, both in Google and inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, start with Analyze AI for free and have a baseline running in minutes.

We do not believe AI search is replacing SEO. We believe it is an additional organic channel that compounds alongside the one you already invest in.