Skip to content

Blog / What You Look for in the Bible: The Top 20 Keyword Search Terms on Bible Gateway

What You Look for in the Bible: The Top 20 Keyword Search Terms on Bible Gateway

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:

  1. Love
  2. Faith
  3. Peace
  4. Hope
  5. Marriage
  6. Joy
  7. Prayer
  8. Strength
  9. Grace
  10. Children
  11. Forgiveness
  12. Healing
  13. Holy Spirit
  14. Salvation
  15. Fear
  16. Trust
  17. Heart
  18. Forgive
  19. Comfort
  20. Pray
  21. Worship
  22. Friend
  23. Worry
  24. Light
  25. Patience
  26. Death
  27. Love one another
  28. Love is patient
  29. Truth
  30. Sin
  31. Fruit of the Spirit
  32. Thanksgiving
  33. Divorce
  34. Heaven
  35. Anger
  36. Spirit
  37. Praise
  38. Wife
  39. Family
  40. Trust in the Lord
  41. Tongue
  42. Work
  43. God is Love
  44. Jesus
  45. Ten Commandments
  46. Baptism
  47. Encouragement
  48. Satan
  49. Repent
  50. Tithe

Filed under General