Question

My MySQL table is as follows:

ID  term  timestamp

1   foo    xxxx
2   bar    xxxx
3   bar    xxxx
4   foo    xxxx
5   foo    xxxx
6   foo    xxxx
7   xxx    xxxx

I wish to produce a list displaying the most common terms in order of quantity of that term

i.e. the end result:

foo 
bar
xxx

What query should I use ? I’ve done some googling, but I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for – COUNT / GROUP BY etc.

Answer 1

The following SQL query should provide a solution to your problem.

SELECT term
FROM tablename
GROUP BY term
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC