Google Trends Adds Category Filters to the Explore Page

Google Trends has added a category filter to its new Explore page, announced by the Trends team on 2 September 2026. The filter works two ways: apply it alongside a query to narrow that query’s trend data to a single category, or apply it with no query at all to see the top-searched terms within a category across a chosen region and timeframe.

The second mode is the useful one for keyword research. Filtering a category on its own turns Explore into a discovery surface: instead of testing terms you already have, you can read the terms rising within a niche and work outward from there. Google’s own example is narrowing “Java” to a search-marketing category to separate the programming sense from the rest. Open the Explore page, set the category (and, if you want, leave the query blank), and read what the category is surfacing before you commit to a seed term.

Sources

• Trends category filters on the new Explore page - Google Trends on LinkedIn
• Google Trends Explore Page Adds Category Filtering - Search Engine Roundtable