BluePrint.PH does a bi-monthly scan of trending keywords in Facebook among Filipino Facebook users. BluePrint.PH monitored Facebook from February 1 to 15, 2021, and gathered around 70 million engagement scores from 289 keywords from the daily monitoring of Facebook’s top trending keywords. (Engagement score or data points is the performance of the keyword in posts, comments and reactions — like (👍), love (️), Haha (😆), sad () and angry (😡).)

Looking at organic engagements, COVID-19 topped again the list of trending keywords with a total of three (3) million engagement scores. Curiously, another term for COVID-19 — “coronavirus” — is on the 7th spot with 2.1 million data points. 

Closely following COVID-19 as the number one trending keyword on Facebook during the period is 500yearsofChristianity and other Catholic-related keywords “QuiapoChurch” (3rd), “wegiveouryes” (4th), “giftedtogive”(5th), minorbasilicaoftheblacknazarene” (6th), respectively. Also included is “yearofsaintjoseph” at the 10th spot. Filipino Catholics celebrate 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines on April this year. 

Other keywords that landed in the top 10 organic engagement list are “Facebook live”, and the K-Pop group “BTS” (9th).

Table 1. Top 10 Trending Keywords from 1 to 15 February 2021

A different result, however, was generated when the gathered 289 keywords were grouped into 23 categories of the same concern.

Under these 23 categories, the leading keywords category was Faith, which included the keywords “500yearsofChristianity”, “QuiapoChurch”, “Wegiveouryes”, and “giftedtogift”. These are seen as keywords supplied by Filipino Catholics as they mark 500 years of Christianity in the country.

Landing second in the list of categories, called the “Korean Wave”, include the keywords K-Pop superstar band “BTS”, the all-girl groups “BlackPink” and “Twice”, younger K-pop artists “TomorrowXTogether (TXT)”, and the K-drama series, “True Beauty”. 

Third top category of keywords comprise Local Entertainment, led by “Kapuso Mo, Jessica Sojo and posts on the controversial poster of the movie “Tililing”

Landing as 4th top keyword category is COVID-19, which included the keywords “coronavirus” and “COVID-19Ph”. 

A category of commercial brands placed fifth, led by “Lazada” (#nasalazadayan) and milk product “Nido” (#todoexplorer).

The categories of keywords that followed were Social media, local news, inspirational (which included Valentine’s Day), NBA, and education in the 6th to 10th places, respectively.

Table 2. Shows the Top Trending Keywords by Category