The state of Claude skills in 2026: what 38,000 searches say
What 38,000 search queries say about Claude skills: the most-searched skills by name, how interest changed through 2026, which countries search most, where the traffic goes, and what people cannot find.
Claude skills went from an Anthropic feature to a category in under a year. To see what people actually want from them, we analysed every search query Ahrefs records around "claude skills", "agent skills", "claude code skills", plugins, MCP and the marketplaces that list them: 38,147 United States queries, the same terms across 85 countries, 24 months of monthly volume for the head terms, and the pages that currently win the traffic. The data was exported on 6 October 2026. This is what it shows.
Try it on a real task: Academic Plotting is free for 25 runs a month.
#The headline numbers
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Distinct US queries about skills, plugins, MCP and agents | 38,147 |
| Queries with measurable volume (10 or more a month) | 9,762 |
| Total US searches a month across the set | about 650,000 |
| Searches a month for skill-specific queries | about 183,000 |
| Searches a month for MCP-specific queries | about 207,000 |
| "claude skills" and "claude code skills" (each) | about 10,000 |
| Queries with 10,000 or more searches | 4 |
| Worldwide volume relative to the US | about 3.7 times |
Two things stand out. First, demand is concentrated at the top: four queries carry a third of all the volume, and 28,385 of the 38,147 queries have no measurable volume at all. Second, MCP is a bigger search topic than skills, but almost 80 percent of MCP searches are branded (a specific server or vendor), while skill searches are spread across thousands of named skills.
#People search for skills by name
The most useful finding for anyone publishing skills: people do not search "best writing skill for Claude". They search the skill's name.
| Named skill | What people type |
|---|---|
| Humanizer | humanizer claude skill, claude humanizer |
| Nano Banana | nano banana claude, nano banana skill |
| Stop Slop | stop slop claude |
| Superpowers | superpowers claude code |
| Impeccable | impeccable claude skill |
| Taste Skill | taste skill claude |
| Anthropic's pptx, docx, xlsx and pdf skills | claude pptx skill, claude excel skill |
| Obsidian Skills | obsidian claude skills |
| Remotion Skills | remotion claude skill |
Across the whole set, 2,894 queries name a specific community skill, and together they draw about 57,500 US searches a month. Almost all of them have a keyword difficulty of zero: the only pages competing are the GitHub repository and a handful of directory listings. A page that explains what the skill does, who made it and how to install it has a clear path to ranking. That is why the SkillGild catalog now lists these community skills with their install commands, credited to their authors, alongside hosted skills.
#Interest peaked in January, use kept growing
Monthly volume for "claude skills" rose sharply after Anthropic launched Agent Skills in October 2025, peaked in January 2026, and has fallen about 62 percent since. That is the normal shape of a launch: a wave of "what is this" searches, then a long tail of people who use the feature.
The queries that kept growing through the decline are the practical ones:
- Creating skills. "how to create a claude skill", "claude skill template", "skill.md example", "claude code custom skills" and their variants add up to about 10,200 searches a month, all with difficulty under 30. We wrote how to create a Claude skill for them.
- Installing skills. "install claude code skills", "claude skills directory", "where are claude skills stored". See how to install Claude Code skills.
- Telling the pieces apart. "claude skills vs mcp", "skills vs subagents", "claude code plugins vs skills". See skills vs agents, commands and plugins.
The jobs people want skills for also show up: marketing, SEO, writing, documents, research, trading and design all have their own query clusters. Marketing is the clearest gap, with every "claude skills for marketing" query at difficulty zero and no page that answers it well.
#Where the traffic goes today
We classified the pages that rank for the top queries by type.
| Page type | Share of traffic | Pages | Traffic per page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official docs and vendors | 32% | 51 | 389 |
| Blog articles | 18% | 67 | 165 |
| Reddit threads | 17% | 33 | 312 |
| Directories and marketplaces | 14% | 38 | 224 |
| GitHub repositories | 9% | 19 | 303 |
| YouTube videos | 6% | 33 | 114 |
Anthropic's documentation takes the largest share, as you would expect for a vendor feature. Reddit threads earn more per page than blog articles, which says people want other users' experience, not restated documentation. Directories earn their share from named-skill queries; GitHub earns its share from the same queries when no directory page exists.
#The world outside the US
Worldwide volume is about 3.7 times the US figure. Japan, Brazil and South Korea are the largest markets after the US, and in each the English query dominates: people search "claude skills" in English and read English pages. The practical conclusion is that one good English page serves most of the world, and translated pages are a later optimisation.
#What people cannot find
Gaps where the queries exist and the answers do not:
- A page per named skill that is better than the repository's README: what it does, what it needs, how to install it in each agent, who made it, what license it carries.
- Skills for a job, especially marketing, SEO, writing and documents, where the queries are specific and uncontested.
- Creating skills, which has ten thousand searches a month and mostly ranks forum answers.
- Honest comparisons of the hosting and marketplace models, which is where most marketplace brand searches (about 2,100 a month for the largest directory) come from.
#How we did this
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer exports for the seed terms "claude skills", "claude code skills", "agent skills", "claude plugins", "mcp server" and the names of each marketplace: matching terms, related terms, search suggestions, volume by country and 24 months of history, plus Site Explorer exports for the pages ranking on the top queries. Queries were classified by concept (skills, MCP, plugins, agents, marketplaces), intent and the skill or product they name. Volumes are Ahrefs estimates for the United States unless stated; keyword difficulty is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 scale. We will rerun the analysis and update this page as the data changes.
For the picks that come out of it, read the best Claude Code skills. For how the marketplaces compare, read the best AI agent skill marketplaces.
Frequently asked questions
How many people search for Claude skills?
In the United States, 'claude skills' and 'claude code skills' are each searched about 10,000 times a month, and all skill-related queries together add up to roughly 183,000 US searches a month. Worldwide volume is about 3.7 times the US figure.
Which Claude skills are the most searched?
Skills searched by name: Humanizer, Nano Banana, Stop Slop, Superpowers, Impeccable, Taste Skill, Anthropic's document skills (pptx, docx, xlsx, pdf), Obsidian skills and Remotion skills lead the list. Together, 2,894 named community skills draw about 57,500 US searches a month.
Is interest in Claude skills growing?
Search interest in the head term peaked in January 2026 and has fallen about 62 percent since, while searches for how to create, install and use specific skills keep growing. Demand is moving from curiosity to use.
Where do people searching for Claude skills end up?
Official documentation takes about a third of the traffic, blog articles 18 percent, Reddit threads 17 percent, directories and marketplaces 14 percent, GitHub repositories 9 percent and YouTube 6 percent.