Updated January 6, 2026
Reading time: 9 minutes
Retail is seasonal. And it’s never static. As a result, what sells at one time of year might not do well at another.
- Is there a way to know which keywords perform well when?
- Is there a way to spot up-and-coming keywords? Just before they begin to take off? And before your competition?
For eRank members yes there is, and it might well be a game changer for you. It’s eRank’s Trend Buzz!
Etsy’s Top 100 Keywords
Trend Buzz is under Trends on eRank’s Main Menu. Its landing page shows the top keywords across all of Etsy. (For free members the first five are shown, while paid members can see the top 100.) Note that these are keywords that actual buyers have been entering into Etsy search. The default view is the most recent full month for which eRank has data, but you can also choose to see popular keywords for yesterday or for the past seven days.
See the little red flame icons? They indicate keywords that were popular yesterday. Use the filter box to see data for any subset of keywords. You can sort the results alphabetically or by search volume. Just click on the column headings. Reverse the sort by clicking again. Or click the little gray up-down sort carets. These will darken to indicate the prevailing sort order.
Each keyword has its own search trend graph. These show you the number of searches each month for the past 15 months. The green bars highlight the most recent month.
Tips for choosing which keywords to use
Use the search trend graph to spot trends related to seasonality or holidays. For instance, you can see when traffic for Christmas begins and drops off. This gives an insight as to how far in advance those listings should be ready to go in your shop.
Take a look into the other tabs for more specific keywords related to your items; colors, products, recipients, styles, and materials all should be mentioned within your listings. Use relevant keywords within your title, tags, and descriptions as part of your SEO strategy.
Using Trend Buzz with other eRank tools: Keyword Tool and Keyword Lists
Do you carry items that could be Valentine’s Day gifts for him? If so, this would be a good time to create a Keyword List to collect data for next year. Have you noticed the stars just to the left of each keyword? If you click one, it turns green. This indicates that you’ve added it to a Keyword List. Thereafter, eRank will automatically update its stats monthly for you. Maybe make a note there to remind yourself that you will want to add this keyword to your listings a good two months ahead of next January. A two months’ lead gives Etsy’s search algorithm time to gather information on your shop and listings and grant you “authority” for this keyword.
Let’s click on #3-ranked Christmas. When we do, our view of Trend Buzz is replaced with a Keyword Tool report on just this keyword.
On the top left is the Keyword Statistics, with a breakdown of data averaged over the past 12 months. We see that searches, clicks, and CTR (Click Through Rate) are all quite good. No surprise: competition for Christmas is high. Over on the Search Trend line graph, the green line shows October 2024 through December 2025. It shows reasonably steady search volume for this keyword that climbed to a high in November both years.
What about all that competition though?
How to get around high competition: Long Tail Keywords
Let’s scroll down our Keyword Tool page to the Keyword Ideas table and see if there are any good Long Tail Keywords. Long Tail Keywords are more specific searches. Therefore, they have less search volume, but can indicate greater purchase intent. (For more about that, see our recent quickie blog post about Long Tail Keywords. We’ll link it at the end of this article.)
If we sort our Keyword Ideas by Average Searches, we see the most popular search terms, many of which are only 1 word, and most of those have very high competition. Paid eRank members can use the filters next to the metrics to refine the search results. If we filter these results to limit the amount of competition (say, under 750,000), our results are drastically different!
Here we can see many more long-tail keywords with very high CTR, indicating greater purchase intent, and therefore more opportunities for sales! A few keywords that pop out as having high search volume and lower competition include “babys first christmas ornament” and “first christmas married ornament”.
How to fish other Etsy categories (not just your own) to find keywords
To see top keywords within a specific Etsy category, use eRank’s Monthly Trends tool. For example, the Top 100 searches that contain the word “vintage” are displayed in the Vintage category. This way, we know that the shopper is indeed interested in vintage items.
Naturally, if you are a vintage seller, this is perfect for spotting trends and what’s hot right now. But don’t skip this category just because what you list isn’t vintage! For example, I make needle-felted sculptures. I list them in Art and Collectibles.
Yet I find this category really useful. When I look through Vintage, I might see searches for bunny rabbit figurine or squirrel figurine, for example. This gives me an idea of what animals might be popular just now. Super useful too is noticing that both of these searches have the word figurine. This tells me that figurine is a term shoppers are using now. Subsequently, I could pop over to eRank’s Bulk Keyword tool to compare it with other words I use, like ornament and sculpture.
Given what I make, next I’d check out the Pet Supplies category. Why, when I don’t sell Pet Supplies? Because, look here, ranking #5: we see custom pet figurines. Nice! Seeing this searches in the Pet Supplies Top 100 indicates demand is pretty solid for my wares just now.
Getting ideas for product research
Another reason I scroll through Pet Supplies is to see which animals are popular. Of course I see dog, cat, horse because they are always popular. An interesting find is jumping spider, which pops up multiple times. I can just type spider into the filter to see how many made the Top 100.
Hmmm: maybe I should make a jumping spider figurine; see how that does.
And how about personalized? I type that into the filter box next. Eight entries, and one of those might be right up my alley: personalized dog things. Now, that keyword might mean the shopper is looking for a gift to buy for their pet, one that can be personalized with their pet’s name. Or, might it be a search for a gift that can be personalized to feature the recipient’s pet? Can’t tell which but I will click the star beside that keyword to add it to my market-research Keyword List.
Ranked #76, I see memorial family portrait. I know how devastating that is. One of my customized pet sculptures might make a thoughtful gift for the right person. I’ll click its star, adding this one to my market-research Keyword List, too.
Filtering for custom next, I see six entries in the Top 100. Well, I’ll definitely be saving custom pet figurines.
Seasonality and Keywords
Mousing over the trend graph for custom pet figurines, I see demand for that keyword jumped considerably back in December. Gifts for the holidays, I’ll bet. And the little lift last month? Might have been Valentine’s Day gifts? I’ve given it a click to save it to my Keyword List. The other gold stars indicate I’ve already added those searches to a Keyword List.
Tip: If I want to know which Keyword List, the Keyword List widget floats in the lower left of my screen. Easy to check without leaving this page.
I always scroll through this category when the new month’s data is first downloaded. What I might look for is whether a particular dog or cat breed is trending, or exotic pets like bearded dragons. I have a Keyword List for tracking trends. If it lasts more than a month, I might have a go.
While the very top terms in this category might not be useful to me as a pet portrait artist, as you can see it’s well worth a look. I may not be able to rank for greyhound. But I might for personalized greyhound sculpture.
Another thing we can do is look back to this time last year to see what terms were starting to take off in early spring. Notice that Date filter box up in the top right corner? Use that to view a drop-down list of the previous 15 months. Click on any of them to see the Top 100 searches that were trending, by category or for all Etsy.
This is how we can get an idea of the up-and-coming seasonal terms. And be able to get our listings up well beforehand, and hopefully rank for them before they start to get too competitive!
Other tools and resources
Remember that like any tool, Trend Buzz and Monthly Trends are just two tools to help you out. Don’t use them alone. It’s just a help for ideas. You want to use Keyword Tool to find out if these terms are any good for you. You want to be checking in Rank Checker to see if you’re ranking for these terms. And above all, you want to be monitoring your Etsy shop stats for how customers are responding to the keywords that you’ve used. (I keep Keyword Lists for those, too.)
I hope that helps! If you have any questions, we do live Q&As right in our eRank Facebook group weekly. Feel free to join us!
Pam Duthie
Etsy Coach
