Google Trends has added a new way to filter its data. Starting with this week, the Explore page offers to filter results by predefined category, plus, for the first time, this option is available in case a user did not type in any request.
Google announced the update on LinkedIn, claiming that they are thrilled to roll out category filters on the newly launched Explore page as it allows isolating trends discovery to individual categories and provides more accurate results. An example of such a category is ‘All Books & Literature.’
What Actually Changed
Before the update, category filtering in Google Trends was a tool used as an integral part of the search process. A user would enter a query in the search bar on the Explore page and would then be able to apply category filters to narrow down the search results and eliminate irrelevant findings. While this approach worked well for users who knew the exact search term they wanted to research, it was less useful for those who wanted to find information on topics that fall under a certain category, but did not have a specific search term in mind.
The update changed the system so that now, according to Google, users can «apply a category filter without entering a query and explore category-specific trends. In practice, this means that now, if a user is interested in a topic that falls under a certain category, but lacks a clear idea of what search term to use, they can find relevant information by accessing category-specific top and rising searches and applying regional and timeframe filters to narrow the results. The old method of using search queries before applying any filters is still available to users, and allows them to specify a search term and limit results to items under a certain category, thus eliminating unrelated search results from other categories that could include the same search term.
Where this Fits Inside Explore
This update is available on the redesigned Explore page that Google unveiled this year. Google updated Explore with Gemini in January, and it added a sidebar with related search terms plus suggested prompts to help users compare topics. The redesigned page also allowed users to compare more terms and displayed twice as many rising terms on each timeline; each term has its own icon and color so that it’s easy to associate a term with the line on the graph. Google used trending dog breeds as an example, suggesting that searches for ‘golden retriever’ or ‘beagle’ or other related terms might appear in a comparison graph along with suggested related topics like ‘hypoallergenic dog breeds.’
The classic view of Explore, the version that many users were accustomed to, had a similar search box, along with filters for location and time, and a section titled ‘What people searched for,’ which separated top searches and rising searches. It also included category filters, but they were tucked below the search box after a user had entered a query.
Google has been iterating on Trends steadily for a couple of years now. In August 2024, Google redesigned the Trending Now page to better reflect actual search volume, and it added more filters and a CSV export. Later in the same month, Google added some advanced comparison tools to Explore, like filters by punctuation in languages and the ability to compare multiple markets at once. More recently, in July 2025, Google began alpha testing a Trends API that would give developers programmatic access to approximately 1,800 days of search data without the five-term comparison limitation that the web interface has always had.
Why This is Useful for Content Research
Search Engine Land’s post on the update’s implications highlights one particular application of the category browsing feature: finding potential topics to research, even if you don’t know what you’re looking for ahead of time. If you write about a particular niche, whether that’s books, home improvement, or something else entirely, the ability to find category-specific terms that are currently popular could serve as a good source of inspiration for people who can’t always think of topics to write about searching for them
But you can’t simply rely on a trends tool to give you topics and have good results, and category browsing should be treated as a starting point for your research rather than an end goal. It’s the second use case that Google outlined that seems the most useful: preventing unrelated searches with the same terms from influencing the trends for a particular topic that you’re interested in. In effect, a search term that has multiple meanings will have its volume distributed across several categories with potentially vastly different trends, which could make it appear more or less popular than it actually is
For people that do keyword or content research for a living, this level of categorization is useful in another light, too: it’s much easier to spot terms marked as ‘rising’ or ‘breaking out’ in a trends chart if you’re limiting your attention to a particular category that you’re interested in, rather than wading through hundreds of unrelated terms. Trends already highlights terms that are breaking out and rising, but using those filters in combination with categories first might help you zero in on the topics that people are interested in more quickly.
How to Try it
One of Google’s own suggestions for using the new filter is to apply a category without entering a search term and, as the company puts it, ‘See popular and rising terms within your category for different countries, time frames, and other preferences…’ to which other filters may be added in the same way as the rest of the redesigned Explore page.
The feature is already available on the new Explore page, and Google has given a direct link to those wishing to try it out for themselves. Users familiar with the old version of Trends will have noticed that the category dropdown behaves differently in this one from the get-go, having no need of a search query to do its job.
Why We Care
Minor usability upgrades like this tend to carry more weight than they perhaps suggest in practice. Content strategists, SEO researchers and journalists who use Trends regularly often approach the tool from the perspective of a general subject area rather than a specific term, and until now, the tool hasn’t really accommodated that particular workflow. The ability to browse a category cold and instantly identify trends within it removes a step that previously involved some degree of guesswork.
And it also ties back to the broader evolutionary arc Google is embarking upon with Trends over the course of 2026, in which more layers of structure and AI-facilitated discovery are being added onto a pre-existing, relatively skeletal search interest platform. Between the Gemini-powered sidebar introduced last January and this particular category filter, Explore is becoming increasingly rewarding of browsing over blind searching in a way that constitutes something of a paradigm shift for anyone who’s spent years manually entering keywords into a search bar and hoping for a useful result. Paired with the Trends API Google announced alpha testing for last year, the long-term vision clearly points towards a tool designed less for one-off searches and more for sustained, structured research, whether that takes place manually on the Explore page or programmatically in an API-driven system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What’s new in Google Trends?
Google Trends now allows users to filter the Explore page by pre-defined category without having to type in a search query first. This is a new way to browse trending terms in a specific area of interest.
Q2: How did category filtering work previously?
Previously, a query had to be entered first, and then a category filter applied on top of it — category filtering was not an option on its own.
Q3: Can I still filter a query by category?
Yes, applying a category filter on top of a query is still possible and encouraged, in order to focus on results specific to one category and avoid unrelated queries which may use the same search terms but have a different meaning.
Q4: Where can I see this for myself?
The Explore page with category filtering can be found in Google Trends, which Google revamped at the beginning of 2026 with Gemini-powered features such as a sidebar and suggested prompts.
Q5: What categories are there?
Google Trends announced “All Books & Literature” as one example category in its launch post. In general, the categories seem to be roughly equivalent to subjects in Google Trends.
Q6: Does this help me find topics to research?
It can help narrow down a topic search, since browsing “All topics” will return the most popular and rising searches within a subject, but should be used as a complement to one’s own knowledge rather than relying on it to find a topic to research.
Q7: Does this replace the previous Explore page?
Not quite. While Google has been pushing users towards the new Explore page, the older version has been retained as a fallback in most implementations of the redesign at the beginning of 2026.
Q8: What other changes have been made to Google Trends?
In Google Trends, the Trending Now page was redesigned and received volume visualizations and CSV export options, advanced comparison tools were implemented in mid-2025, the Trends API was opened to public alpha in late 2025, and Explore was reworked around Gemini in early 2026.
Q9: How do I benefit from this change?
This change enables researchers to apply stricter filters to a search query, focusing the results on one category rather than including all topics. This has the benefit of resulting in a more focused trend graph for terms which have multiple meanings, and can be combined with the “Rising” and “Breakout” filters to find terms with increasing popularity.
Q10: How can I try this out for myself?
The category filter can be accessed in the new Explore page in Google Trends, either with or without a query; Google has provided a link to the feature in its own post announcing it.
