5 Most Googled Book Series
Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.
The most Googled book series in any given year offers a portrait of the pop culture landscape at the time. Take last year's Top 5 and Top 10 for example, which tells readers what books and authors reign supreme in the 21st century, and what the unequivocal #1 genre in modern fiction is.
With the list below, we'll dig deeper into the Top 5 and try to formulate some answers for why they drove so much Google search traffic, beyond just their prolific popularity and cultural institution status.
This data comes to us by way of BookRiot, who attributed its aggregation to bookseller Awesome Books. But rather than just a ranking, it is worth unpacking how each of these franchises made the cut, and why they continue to be such massive draws for modern book lovers and curious potential fans alike.
If nothing else, this list is a testament to something future writers need to take to heart when trying to produce the next massive book franchise: pack in lots of lore, pose plenty of unanswered questions, and make sure to always leave the audience wanting more.
5 The Wheel Of Time
15 Books, Written By Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
It's a tale as old as time. A fantasy writer starts working on a novel, with plans for a trilogy, and it spirals out of control. Robert Jordan's 1990 novel The Eye of the World was the culmination of over half a decade of work, and over the following 17 years, Jordan's story blossomed to encompass eleven books.
The author passed away in the midst of work on what he expected would finally be the last book in the Wheel of Time series. Lauded sci-fi and fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson was brought in to finish the job, and it wound up taking three more books.
All that is to say, The Wheel of Time is a massive, sprawling saga, and it has as much fascinating behind-the-scenes lore as there is in-universe canon for fans to Google the details of. Add into the mix the TV adaptation of the franchise, which was canceled after three seasons last year, and the Google numbers make sense. In fact, it makes it surprising the series isn't even higher in the Top 5.
4 Throne Of Glass
8 Books; Written By Sarah J. Maas
Sarah J. Maas is best known for her fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses, which launched in 2015 with the novel of the same name. Maas has published four sequels so far; book six comes out in October 2026, with book seven following in January 2027. The series is expected to end with its eighth installment.
Maas is also the author of the Throne of Glass high fantasy series, which likewise ran for eight novels published between 2012 and 2018. It is noteworthy that Throne of Glass made the Top 5, racking up nearly 200,000 Google searches in 2025, while Thorns and Roses didn't.
What that suggests is that A Court of Thorns and Roses is such a huge phenomenon that it is driving interest in Sarah J. Maas' other major series, with people scouting the books and their similarities to the writer's other work before checking out the first book.
3 The Lord Of The Rings
3+ Books; Written By J R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Rings is the single most iconic and influential fantasy series in the genre's history. 70 years after the books were published, it is still a dominant force in popular culture. More importantly, it is still a story, and a fictional world, that people have endless questions about.
In addition to the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and other supplemental Middle Earth materials amount to a vast world with its own eons-long history, multiplicity of cultures and languages, cosmology, and more.
For every hardcore fan that can recite this lore off the top of their head, there are thousands upon thousands more people curiously Googling to learn more about J.R.R. Tolkein's flawless worldbuilding.
2 Harry Potter
7+ Books; Written By J.K. Rowling
In something of a surprise upset, Harry Potter comes in at number two on the list for most Googled book series of 2025. That is with anticipation ratcheting up for HBO's TV remake of the franchise, though with promo materials and trailers dropping in 2026 ahead of a Christmas Day debut, there's a good chance it will reclaim the top spot for this year.
In any case, Harry Potter continues to be a cultural powerhouse, despite author J.K. Rowling's increasingly controversial public persona. Potter is a juggernaut, and there's no slowing it down.
What Potter pulling the second-most Google searches suggests is that a new generation of readers is researching the books, at least, if not reading them. And HBO's ten-year plan for Harry Potter means that it is going to continue to generate major search traffic in perpetuity.
1 Percy Jackson & The Olympians
7+ Books; Written By Rick Riordan
Starting with The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson & Olympians has gone on to become one of the bestselling book series of the 21st century. Technically, it is a seven-book series, but it is part of the larger "Camp Half Blood" fictional universe, which has sprawled out to include other sets of books like The Heroes of Olympus and The Trials of Apollo.
Yet it is Percy Jackson that carries all the name recognition. Especially with a hit TV adaptation ongoing (Season Two premiered in December 2025; Season Three is coming in November 2026) the series has a lot of hype. Fans are discovering all of Rick Riordan's "Camp Half Blood" books, but they're doing so, in many cases, by starting with Googling "Percy Jackson."
With over half a million distinct Google searches last year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians was the book series that people had the most questions about in 2025. It will be fascinating to find out where it lands a year later, and how these overall rankings have changed in a calendar year.
The Rest Of The Top 10
The Hunger Games franchise fell just outside the Top 5 for 2025, and it was close, with a reported differential of just over five thousand Google searches between Susan Collins' dystopian novel series and The Wheel of Time.
The Junie B. Jones children's books, the Twilight Saga, and R.L. Stine's Goosebumps, meanwhile, all fell within five thousand Googles of The Hunger Games. After that, there was a significant drop-off in searches for #10 on the list, Outlander.
Final Thoughts
The main takeaway from this list is, obviously, the dominance of the fantasy genre. Every series in the Top 5 is fantasy; overall, seven of the Top 10 fit the genre label in some way or another. That's noteworthy when considering that science fiction feels just as culturally ubiquitous, but doesn't sell nearly as many books, and doesn't generate that much buzz outside of Star Wars and Star Trek.
Googling something is all about wanting, or needing, to know more. The franchises here, in each of their own way, continue to be sources of boundless fascination and exploration for a global set of readers.
Which is to say, how different will this list look for 2026? There will probably be some jockeying for position within the Top 5 and Top 10, but it would be surprising if it were radically different. The real question is, what does a book series have to do to be the next one to launch itself into the orbit of these familiar franchises?
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