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Original data · Etsy search

The State of Etsy Search 2026

We analyzed 271,252 real Etsy search terms. The pattern that runs through all of it: on Etsy, demand and competition rise together — so chasing the biggest keywords means fighting the most sellers. Here's what the data actually says, and how to use it.

Built from Listogics' keyword corpus · data through 2026-08-31 · refreshed quarterly · aggregates only.

86%

of Etsy searches get under 100 searches a month — it's a long-tail marketplace

~27×

more competition on top-demand terms vs. low-demand ones — it scales with demand

0.1%

of terms are both high-demand AND low-competition — the "easy keyword" is a myth

Etsy is a long-tail marketplace

Most Etsy searches are small. The median term gets about 2 searches a month, and 86% of all terms get under 100. The traffic isn't in a handful of blockbuster keywords — it's spread across a very long tail of specific phrases.

Share of search terms by monthly demand

Under 100 86.1%

100-499 9.2%

500-999 2.1%

1,000-4,999 2.3%

5,000-19,999 0.3%

20,000+ 0.0%

What it means for your shop: target specific, descriptive phrases (“personalized leather dog collar”), not broad heads (“dog collar”). The long tail is where the reachable traffic is.

How crowded is the average search?

“Etsy is saturated” is only half true. 33.6% of search terms have fewer than 1,000 competing listings, and only 38.1% face a field of 10,000 or more. The crush is concentrated on a minority of terms — most searches are less crowded than the horror stories suggest.

Share of search terms by number of competing listings

Under 1k 33.6%

1k-10k 28.3%

10k-100k 27.2%

100k+ 10.9%

What it means: don’t let “it’s too competitive” stop you. Pick terms in the lower-competition bands you’re genuinely relevant for — the saturation is real mainly on the big head keywords, which is exactly where demand pulls the most sellers (next).

Competition scales with demand — steeply

The more people search a term, the more sellers are already competing for it. Average competing listings climb from about 63,325 on low-demand terms to roughly 1,702,819 on the highest-demand ones — competition grows far faster than demand does.

Average competing listings, by demand band

Under 100/mo 63,325

100-499/mo 129,713

500-999/mo 221,198

1,000-4,999/mo 363,924

5,000+/mo 1,702,819

What it means: a high-volume keyword isn't a prize, it's a crowd. Winning a moderate-demand term you're genuinely relevant for beats losing a huge one.

The “easy keyword” barely exists

Everyone hunts for the high-demand, low-competition gap. Across 216,071 terms with full data, only 0.1% (112 terms) clear both bars at once (at least 1,000 searches/month AND under 1,000 competing listings). The gap you're looking for is essentially a rounding error.

The reframe: stop hunting for a magic gap. Ranking on Etsy is won on relevance and coverage — a complete, specific, well-tagged listing that matches how buyers actually search — not on finding an untapped keyword nobody else knows.

Most keywords are maxed out on difficulty

Competing-listing counts are one lens; eRank's own keyword difficulty score (0–100 — how hard a term is to rank for) is another, and it tells the same story harder. Of the 170,234 terms carrying a difficulty score, 81.8% sit at the maximum score, while only 2.9% land in the genuinely low-difficulty range a newer shop can realistically win.

Share of scored terms by keyword-difficulty band

Low (0-29) 2.9%

Medium (30-59) 4.0%

High (60-89) 7.8%

Very high (90-99) 3.5%

Maxed out (100) 81.8%

What it means: the typical Etsy keyword is one a small shop can't rank for — so don't measure yourself against it. The winnable minority are specific and long-tail — see exactly how much each extra word lowers competition and difficulty in our Etsy keyword length report. More on the why in why your Etsy keywords are too competitive.

How to actually win, from the data

Target specific long-tail phrases with real buyer intent, not broad one-word heads. Find them with the free keyword tool.
Fill all 13 tags with distinct concepts — repeating one theme wastes slots that could match more searches. (See Etsy Tags by the Numbers for how long tags should be and how many words to use.)
Match real buyer language (materials, occasion, recipient, style), because relevance beats volume every time competition scales with it.
Browse in-demand tags by product on the Etsy tag guides, each with a Low / Medium / High competition read.
Know your niche's odds: demand and competition vary widely by Etsy category — and the biggest categories are also the most crowded.

Methodology

Figures are aggregates over Listogics' keyword corpus — 271,252 Etsy search terms gathered from keyword-research data and public top-shop tag reports, with data through 2026-08-31. Coverage: 89.1% of terms carry a search-volume reading, 88.2% a competing-listing count, and 62.8% a keyword-difficulty score; band percentages are computed over the terms that carry the relevant field. We publish distributions and aggregates only — never a single shop's data and never per-keyword numbers. This is a cross-sectional snapshot; we refresh it quarterly, so trend-over-time comparisons will appear once we have multiple dated snapshots. Numbers are directional, not Etsy-official.

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