If you’re trying to find the most frequent keywords in Google Sheets—especially from a list of blog post titles, product names, or article headlines—you’re in the right place.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to extract the most relevant keywords using formulas only (no scripts needed). We’ll also remove common words like “and,” “the,” or “of” so you get a cleaner list of meaningful terms.

Sample Titles

Let’s say you have this list of titles in column A:

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The goal is to find the most frequent keywords used across all these titles.

Step 1: Split Titles into Individual Words

In cell C2, enter this formula:

=ArrayFormula(LOWER(TOCOL(SPLIT(TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, A2:A), " "))))

What this does:

• Joins all titles into one string (TEXTJOIN)
• Splits the string into words (SPLIT)
• Arranges them into a single column (TOCOL)
• Converts everything to lowercase (LOWER) so similar words are counted together

This gives you a raw list of all words used in the titles.

Step 2: Remove Common Stop Words

You don’t want words like “and,” “the,” or “in” showing up as top keywords, right?

In cell D2, paste this formula to create a list of stop words:

=VSTACK("a", "an", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be", "because", "been", "before", "being", "between", "both", "but", "by", "can", "did", "do", "does", "doing", "down", "each", "few", "for", "from", "had", "has", "have", "he", "her", "here", "him", "his", "how", "i", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "its", "just", "me", "more", "most", "my", "no", "nor", "not", "of", "off", "on", "once", "only", "or", "other", "our", "out", "over", "own", "same", "she", "so", "some", "than", "that", "the", "their", "them", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "those", "through", "to", "too", "under", "until", "up", "very", "was", "we", "were", "what", "when", "where", "which", "while", "who", "whom", "why", "with", "you", "your")

Then in E2, filter out those stop words:

=FILTER(C2:C, ISNA(XMATCH(C2:C, D2:D)))

Now you have a clean list of useful keywords.

Step 3: Count the Most Frequent Keywords

In F2, use this formula to find the top 5:

=SORTN(
  HSTACK(
    UNIQUE(E2:E),
    COUNTIF(E2:E, UNIQUE(E2:E))
  ),
  5, 0, 2, FALSE
)

This will return the 5 most frequent keywords in your titles (excluding common stop words). If there are ties at the 5th spot and you want to include them, just replace the 0 with 1 in the formula.

Bonus: All-in-One Formula (No Helper Columns)

Prefer a one-cell solution? Paste this into any empty cell:

=ArrayFormula(LET(
  split_titles, LOWER(TOCOL(SPLIT(TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, A2:A), " "))),
  stop_words, VSTACK("a", "an", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be", "because", "been", "before", "being", "between", "both", "but", "by", "can", "did", "do", "does", "doing", "down", "each", "few", "for", "from", "had", "has", "have", "he", "her", "here", "him", "his", "how", "i", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "its", "just", "me", "more", "most", "my", "no", "nor", "not", "of", "off", "on", "once", "only", "or", "other", "our", "out", "over", "own", "same", "she", "so", "some", "than", "that", "the", "their", "them", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "those", "through", "to", "too", "under", "until", "up", "very", "was", "we", "were", "what", "when", "where", "which", "while", "who", "whom", "why", "with", "you", "your"),
  clean_words, FILTER(split_titles, ISNA(XMATCH(split_titles, stop_words))),
  top_keywords, SORTN(HSTACK(UNIQUE(clean_words), COUNTIF(clean_words, UNIQUE(clean_words))), 5, 0, 2, FALSE),
  top_keywords
))

This does everything—from splitting and cleaning to counting—in a single step.

Wrapping Up

With just a few formulas, you can find the most frequent keywords in Google Sheets from any list of titles. Whether you’re analyzing blog posts, YouTube videos, or product listings, this approach gives you a clean and quick snapshot of what topics stand out.

Try adjusting the stop word list or the number of top results depending on your data.