How to Find What’s Trending on Bing?

As of 2026, Bing still makes trending search data accessible through several free and paid surfaces — but the useful ones aren’t always the ones Microsoft markets the hardest. The homepage “Popular Now” carousel gives you a quick glance at real-time search buzz, Microsoft Start stitches trending stories into a news feed, and Bing Webmaster Tools quietly publishes one of the only free first-party keyword datasets that isn’t Google. If you want anything deeper than surface-level headlines, though, you’ll need to move past the homepage and into Webmaster Tools, Microsoft Advertising, or a third-party SEO platform that licenses Bing data.

This guide walks through every current method, what each one is actually good for, where they break down, and the exact click paths to find them. Methods are ordered from zero-effort browsing to advanced SEO analysis.

Quick comparison: which Bing trending tool to use

Method	Cost	Effort	What you get	Best for
Bing homepage “Popular Now”	Free	None	Live carousel of ~8–12 trending queries	Casual awareness
Bing Image Trending	Free	Low	Trending image categories and subjects	Visual creators, moodboarding
Microsoft Start / MSN	Free	Low	Trending news clustered by topic	News and current events
Bing Webmaster Tools — Keyword Research	Free	Medium	Monthly search volume, related queries	SEO research on your own site
Microsoft Advertising Keyword Planner	Free with ad account	Medium	Volume, forecasted clicks, suggested bids	Paid search, SEM forecasting
Third-party tools (Semrush, Ahrefs, KeywordTool.io)	Paid	Medium	Bing-specific volume, difficulty, SERP data	Competitive SEO, content strategy
Keywords Everywhere extension	Paid credits	Low	Inline volume/CPC on Bing SERPs	Quick on-the-fly checks
Bing Search Performance report	Free	Low	Your site’s Bing clicks, impressions, CTR	Owners tracking their own trend impact

1. Bing homepage “Popular Now”

The fastest way to see what’s trending on Bing is to open bing.com in any browser. Directly beneath the search box, Bing displays a “Popular Now” row — a rotating strip of 8 to 12 queries that are spiking right now. Click any chip and Bing runs the search for you, so you can see why the term is trending before you decide if it matters.

• Localized results: Bing uses your IP to show region-specific trends. If you’re on a VPN, expect the carousel to reflect whichever country the exit node is in.
• Sign in for personalization: If you sign into a Microsoft account, the carousel is weighted by your recent activity. Browsing in a private/incognito window gives you the unpersonalized list.
• Limitation: There’s no history. You see what’s trending in this moment, but Bing doesn’t tell you what was trending yesterday.

2. Bing Image Trending

Bing Images maintains its own trending page that’s separate from the web search carousel. It surfaces categories people are searching pictures for — which is often very different from what they’re searching text for.

How to find it: Go to bing.com/images/trending. The page is organized into sections like People, Animals, Nature, Pop Culture, and Events. Click into any tile and Bing runs the image search with the trending subject pre-filled.

This is useful if you create visual content — designers, photo editors, video thumbnailers, and Pinterest-focused marketers will find ideas here that Google Trends won’t surface because Google doesn’t expose image-search trends at the category level.

3. Microsoft Start (MSN) trending topics

Microsoft Start at msn.com is the news layer on top of Bing. It clusters trending stories by vertical — News, Sports, Entertainment, Money, Technology, Lifestyle — and the ordering is driven by a combination of editorial curation and real-time engagement signals from Bing and Edge users.

Where to look: The top navigation strip on msn.com shows the category tabs. Scroll past the hero story to the “Trending” or “Top Stories” rails. On mobile, the same feed is built into the Edge browser’s new tab page.

Use this when you care about stories, not keywords. If you’re writing content that chases the news cycle, Microsoft Start will tell you what’s moving on Bing’s audience before that story shows up in the Popular Now chip row.

4. Bing Webmaster Tools — Keyword Research

This is the most underused free tool in SEO. Bing Webmaster Tools gives anyone with a Microsoft account — you do not need a verified website — access to Bing’s first-party keyword data.

Path to find it:

1. Go to bing.com/webmasters and sign in with a Microsoft account.
2. In the left sidebar, click Keyword Research.
3. Enter a seed keyword, select country and language, choose the time range (default is the past 6 months).
4. Bing returns average monthly impressions, related keywords, and a trend chart.

What makes this different from Google Keyword Planner: Bing’s data isn’t bucketed into ranges — you get specific numbers rather than “1K–10K” estimates. You also don’t need an active ad campaign to unlock full data, which is a hurdle Google added years ago.

Caveat: Bing’s search share in the U.S. sits around 7–10% (per Statcounter, 2025–2026 data), so volumes will look smaller than Google. That’s not a reason to ignore the data — lower-competition Bing keywords often convert better because the commercial CPCs are cheaper.

5. Microsoft Advertising Keyword Planner

If you want forecasted performance data — not just historical volume — use the Keyword Planner inside Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads). It gives you suggested bids, expected clicks, and competition scores in addition to volume.

How to access it:

1. Sign into ads.microsoft.com (free — you don’t need an active campaign).
2. In the top navigation, open Tools → Keyword Planner.
3. Choose Search for new keywords or Get search volume and forecasts.
4. Filter by location, language, device, and date range.

This is the right tool when you’re trying to decide whether a trending keyword is worth paying for — it will estimate the daily cost and click volume at different bid levels. It’s also the only free Microsoft source for commercial intent signals.

6. Third-party platforms that include Bing data

Not every SEO platform treats Bing as a first-class data source, but these three do as of 2026:

• Semrush: Offers Bing-specific search volume and SERP tracking in its Keyword Overview and Position Tracking tools. Requires a paid plan (Pro tier and above).
• Ahrefs: Bing volume is available in the Keywords Explorer alongside Google, YouTube, Amazon, and others. Competitive index and click data are Google-centric but the raw volumes are Bing-sourced.
• KeywordTool.io: Has a dedicated Bing mode that pulls autosuggest data directly from Bing’s own autocomplete API. The free tier shows keyword suggestions; volumes and CPC are paywalled.

Use a third-party tool when you need to compare Bing to Google side by side, or when you want Bing SERP tracking that Microsoft’s own tools don’t provide.

7. Keywords Everywhere browser extension

Keywords Everywhere is a paid (credit-based) browser extension for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. When installed, it overlays volume, CPC, and competition data directly onto the Bing search results page next to the queries you’re already running.

Credits start at roughly $2 per 10,000 keywords and don’t expire. This is the cheapest way to pull ad-hoc Bing data without logging into a dashboard. The trade-off: the data is pulled from Google Keyword Planner and third-party clickstream, not directly from Bing — so treat the numbers as estimates rather than first-party truth.

8. Bing Search Performance report (your own site)

If the goal isn’t “what’s trending on Bing globally” but “what’s trending for my site on Bing,” the Search Performance report inside Bing Webmaster Tools is the answer.

Path: bing.com/webmasters → verify your site (via DNS, HTML file, or Google Search Console import) → Search Performance in the sidebar.

You’ll see clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position per query, per page, and per country, with up to 16 months of history. Filter by the last 28 days and sort by impressions delta to find queries that are trending for your content specifically.

What about Bing Trends as a standalone product?

Unlike Google, Microsoft does not publish a standalone “Bing Trends” dashboard comparable to trends.google.com. There is no public interactive trend-comparison tool for Bing. The closest equivalents are the Keyword Research tool inside Webmaster Tools (for historical volume) and the Popular Now carousel (for real-time). If you’ve seen a site calling itself “Bing Trends” with a dashboard UI, it’s a third-party scraper, not a Microsoft product.

Which method should you use?

• You just want to browse: Bing homepage Popular Now + Microsoft Start.
• You create visual content: Bing Image Trending.
• You run a website and want free data: Bing Webmaster Tools Keyword Research + Search Performance.
• You’re planning paid campaigns: Microsoft Advertising Keyword Planner.
• You want Google vs. Bing side by side: Semrush or Ahrefs.
• You want inline data while searching: Keywords Everywhere.

The honest take

For casual awareness, the Bing homepage and Microsoft Start are enough — and they’re the only surfaces where you’ll see what’s trending in real time. For anything strategic, the Popular Now carousel won’t carry you past curiosity; you need historical data, and that lives in Bing Webmaster Tools Keyword Research, which is free and underused. Paid tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Keywords Everywhere are worth it only when your workflow already demands them or when you need to compare Bing to Google in the same view. Start with the free Microsoft tools, add a third-party platform when their ceiling is actually blocking you, and skip anything that calls itself “Bing Trends” as a branded product — Microsoft doesn’t publish one.