What do people look for in the Bible?
As you may know, Bible Gateway lets you search the Bible not only by Scripture reference (e.g. “John 3:16”), but by keyword (“Jesus,” “Pharisee,” “faith,” etc.). What would you guess are the most-searched-for terms?
We’ve crunched the numbers to find out what are the most popular search terms. Here are the top 20 keyword searches on Bible Gateway, based on our data from 2012 (click the image to enlarge). The vertical bars show relative popularity:
It may not surprise you to see love, faith, peace, and hope in this list. But it’s worth noting that anger, fear and death also made it into the top 50.
Overall, it’s an uplifting list to read—it’s evidence that people turned to God’s Word for encouragement when they were down, forgiveness when they wronged a friend or loved one, and patience when they were at the very end of their rope.
What do you think this list says about Bible readers? Are there any words you expected to see that didn’t make the list? And if you were to make a personal list of topics you’ve looked up in the Bible, would it resemble this list?
For the curious, here is the complete list of the top 50 search terms:
- Love
- Faith
- Peace
- Hope
- Marriage
- Joy
- Prayer
- Strength
- Grace
- Children
- Forgiveness
- Healing
- Holy Spirit
- Salvation
- Fear
- Trust
- Heart
- Forgive
- Comfort
- Pray
- Worship
- Friend
- Worry
- Light
- Patience
- Death
- Love one another
- Love is patient
- Truth
- Sin
- Fruit of the Spirit
- Thanksgiving
- Divorce
- Heaven
- Anger
- Spirit
- Praise
- Wife
- Family
- Trust in the Lord
- Tongue
- Work
- God is Love
- Jesus
- Ten Commandments
- Baptism
- Encouragement
- Satan
- Repent
- Tithe