Most popular Bible verses and keywords in 2016 on Bible Gateway

The Bible Gateway has released a list of popular verses and keywords that people searched for throughout the year 2016.

The data, which is based on over 1.7 billion page views and over 180 million unique visitors to its website between December 2015 and November 2016, provides insight into people's engagement with the Bible in 2016.

The most popular keyword of the year is "love," followed by "faith," "peace," "hope," and "joy." At sixth place is "prayer," followed by "holy spirit", "grace," "healing," and "forgiveness."

The website provides a visualization so that users may be able to track how popular a particular keyword was on any given day between 2014 and 2016.

According to the website, the most popular verse in 2016 is John 3:16 which states, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

It is followed by Jeremiah 29:11, which reads, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

At third place is Philippians 4:13 which states, "I can do all this through him who gives me strength."

The website recently introduced the emoji search function to allow users to look up popular emoji used in searching the Bible.

The most popular one is "Person With Folded Hands," followed by "Heavy Black Heart," "Person Raising Both Hands in Celebration," "Smiling Face With Halo," and "Face With Tears of Joy."

The website also allows visitors to take notes on Bible passages. The most annotated verse this year is Philippians 4:6 which states, "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."

The Bible Gateway was created by Nick Hengeveld in 1993, when he was still a student at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2008, the website became a division of Zondervan and a member of Harpercollins Christian Publishing.

Several Christian institutions, including the American Bible Society, Crossway Bibles, Logos Bible Software, Tyndale House Publishers, and World Bible Translation Center, have contributed their Bible resources and translations to Bible Gateway.

The website and the app have more than 200 Bible versions, and they are available in more than 70 languages. New translations, languages, and functionality are still being added to the website to this day to help its users conveniently engage the Bible.