TikTok search trends · US · October 2026
TikTok search trends, October 2026: 28 product searches with too few videos
TikTok shows creators which searches are popular and which ones lack good videos (it calls them content gaps), but only inside the app. We pulled the content-gap lists for six categories plus the overall and most-searched lists for the US, 155 searches in total, and kept the 28 that a brand or seller could answer with a product video. Nail designs lead the fashion gaps, a drink machine search with popularity 86 had no videos at all, and searches for crabcore bands, a budget laptop and a home-renovation how-to jumped the most in a week.
The question we ran
What are people in the US searching for on TikTok right now, and where are there not enough videos to answer those searches? Use TikTok Creator Search Insights: pull the content gap searches for each available category (Fashion, Food, Sports, Gaming, Tourism, Science) plus the overall list, and the most-searched list. For each category show the searches with the highest popularity, how many videos already exist and how the popularity changed over the last 7 days. For the 5 most promising product-related searches, add the audience breakdown (gender, age). Tell a brand or seller which searches they should make videos for this month.
The request we ran, unchanged.
How the data was collected
Nolyn called TikTok Creator Search Insights eight times on October 12, 2026 at 06:31 UTC (US view, English): the content-gap tab for Fashion, Food, Sports, Gaming, Tourism and Science, the content-gap tab without a category, and the all-searches tab, 20 searches each. That gave 155 different searches, 128 of them labelled as content gaps. For five searches it also pulled the past-7-day audience by gender and age. We then kept only searches for a product, a product type or a product how-to; people's names, celebrity news, local places and restaurants, sports matchups, game storylines and searches with unclear meaning were left out. This is a selection, not a ranking of everything searched on TikTok.
The data
| Search | Area | Popularity | 7 days ago → now | Videos | Content gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| national anthem girl flag dress | Fashion | 92 | 75 → 92 | 1,076 | Yes |
| toyota sequoia 2027 | Autos | 92 | 70 → 92 | 2,671 | Yes |
| quinoa cream of wheat | Food | 90 | 86 → 90 | 443 | Yes |
| Nike Air Rifts | Fashion | 90 | 74 → 90 | 955 | Yes |
| Lotus nails | Beauty | 90 | 85 → 90 | 3,018 | Yes |
| fifa world cup 2026 hotels | Travel | 87 | 86 → 87 | 5,348 | Yes |
| freestyle drink machine | Food | 86 | 72 → 86 | 0 | Yes |
| crabcore bands | Fitness | 86 | 18 → 86 | 505 | Yes |
| patricks potato chips | Food | 86 | 73 → 86 | 659 | Yes |
| waveform lifting bar | Fitness | 86 | 82 → 86 | 682 | Yes |
| NailsInspo | Beauty | 80 | 74 → 80 | 1,404 | Yes |
| HotPilates | Fitness | 77 | 75 → 77 | 457 | Yes |
| How To Make Lashes Look Like Extensions | Beauty | 74 | 73 → 74 | 728 | Yes |
| eggel speaker | Tech | 74 | 18 → 74 | 753 | No |
| digital whiteboard | Tech | 73 | 37 → 73 | 791 | No |
| hawaii lululemon | Fashion | 73 | 73 → 73 | 1,010 | Yes |
| new york city winter outfits | Fashion | 73 | 71 → 73 | 1,082 | Yes |
| ramen brick | Food | 73 | 70 → 73 | 11,674 | Yes |
| cleaning septic tank | Home | 72 | 74 → 72 | 879 | Yes |
| fall coffee | Food | 72 | 73 → 72 | 1,180 | Yes |
| olive nails | Beauty | 71 | 75 → 71 | 1,082 | Yes |
| Drop shipping For Beginners | Business | 70 | 74 → 70 | 915 | Yes |
| butter nails | Beauty | 70 | 73 → 70 | 6,301 | Yes |
| pediasure growth | Parenting | 68 | 71 → 68 | 974 | Yes |
| Best Laptop Under 500 | Tech | 67 | 0 → 67 | 764 | Yes |
| holy grail lash serum | Beauty | 67 | 37 → 67 | 798 | Yes |
| perfumecheck | Beauty | 63 | 30 → 63 | 1,006 | Yes |
| how to fix up old house on a budget | Home | 62 | 8 → 62 | 844 | Yes |
Popularity is TikTok's own 0–100 score, not a search count. "7 days ago → now" compares the first and last of the seven daily values TikTok returns. Videos is the number of videos TikTok counts for the search. Content gap is TikTok's label for searches without enough good videos. The lists are what TikTok recommends to a creator account, so they mix popularity with relevance.
What the data shows
Nail designs are the biggest beauty gap
Four of the 20 fashion content gaps were nail designs: Lotus nails (popularity 90, 3,018 videos), NailsInspo (80, 1,404), olive nails (71, 1,082) and butter nails (70, 6,301). Lash searches followed: "How To Make Lashes Look Like Extensions" (74, 728 videos) and "holy grail lash serum" (67, 798), which swung between 0 and 67 during the week.
Some popular searches have almost no videos
"freestyle drink machine" had popularity 86 and no videos at all. Among content gaps scoring 85 or more, "quinoa cream of wheat" had 443 videos, "crabcore bands" 505, "patricks potato chips" 659 and "waveform lifting bar" 682. For comparison, "Relatable post ideas" on the most-searched list had 496,785 videos.
The fastest risers: crabcore bands, a budget laptop and a renovation how-to
Over seven days, "crabcore bands" rose from 18 to 86, "Best Laptop Under 500" from 0 to 67, "eggel speaker" from 18 to 74, "how to fix up old house on a budget" from 8 to 62 and "digital whiteboard" from 37 to 73. Two higher-ticket searches scored high with more videos already published: "toyota sequoia 2027" rose from 70 to 92 (2,671 videos) and "fifa world cup 2026 hotels" stayed between 85 and 88 (5,348).
The five audiences we checked were mostly women aged 18–24
For the flag dress, Nike Air Rifts, holy grail lash serum, quinoa cream of wheat and waveform lifting bar searches, women made up 64% to 88% of searches with a known gender, and 18–24 was the largest age group in every case (53% to 71% of searches with a known age). We have no baseline for TikTok's search audience as a whole, so this may partly reflect who searches on TikTok in general.
The overall most-searched list is about TikTok itself
12 of the 20 searches on the all-searches tab were about using TikTok or posting on it, such as "Relatable post ideas" (87), "photo dump slideshow" (83) and "new account on tiktok" (77). Product opportunities show up in the category and content-gap lists, not in the overall top searches.
What to make videos for this month
The clearest openings are searches that score high but have few videos and a product you can show: nail design tutorials, lash tutorials, fitness gear such as the waveform lifting bar, a budget laptop round-up and a home-renovation-on-a-budget guide. A search that jumped this week can fall next week, so pick the ones that held their score for several days, such as Lotus nails, waveform lifting bar and quinoa cream of wheat, and treat sharp spikes as tests.
- Search the term in TikTok yourself and watch the top videos: if they already answer it well, the gap may be closing.
- Check that the search means what you think. Some terms, such as brand nicknames, can refer to several products.
- Re-check popularity a week later before committing a series of videos to one search.
- Popularity is not demand for your product. Confirm with TikTok Shop listings or Amazon reviews before buying inventory.
Questions
What are people searching for on TikTok right now?
On October 12, 2026, the US all-searches list in Creator Search Insights was led by searches about using TikTok, such as "Relatable post ideas" and "photo dump slideshow". Among product searches, the highest scores were for "toyota sequoia 2027" and a flag dress (both 92), and "quinoa cream of wheat", "Nike Air Rifts" and "Lotus nails" (all 90).
What is a content gap on TikTok?
It is TikTok's label, shown in Creator Search Insights, for a search that people make often but that has few good videos to answer it. 128 of the 155 searches we collected carried the label.
How do I see TikTok search trends without the app?
TikTok shows Creator Search Insights only to creators in the app. Nolyn can pull the same lists, the 7-day trend and the audience by gender and age, and turn them into a sourced report. The button below runs the same request.
What does TikTok's popularity score mean?
It is a relative 0–100 score TikTok assigns to a search. It is not the number of searches, and TikTok does not say how it is calculated, so compare searches with each other rather than reading it as volume.
Limits of this data
Each list holds 20 searches and reflects what TikTok recommends to the creator account used (US, English), so another account can see a different list. Popularity is a relative score, not a search count, and the seven daily values can swing sharply for small searches. The 28 searches shown were chosen by us; the other 127 include names, local places and game terms that we did not publish. Audience data covers only five searches and the past seven days. TikTok updates these lists daily; all figures are a snapshot of October 12, 2026.
How this page was made
Nolyn wrote a report from these lists, and every figure on this page was recomputed from the saved API responses instead. The report had serious errors that we did not carry over: its food, sports, tourism and gaming tables listed at least 16 searches that appear in none of the responses (for example a flights search with popularity 91 and one video), and its most-searched list included terms that were not returned. Every search on this page appears in the saved responses. Celebrity and personal names returned by TikTok are not published.