The core quality of counselors is the key factor to determine the career achievement and personal development of counselors, and also an important factor affecting the effectiveness of moral education in colleges and universities. Based on CiteSpace, this paper finds that the research on core literacy of college counselors began in 2016 and has attracted extensive attention from researchers in recent years, which will be an important part of the research on college counselors in the future. There is less cooperation and exchange among universities, and no research force is formed. The research direction has changed from the connotation and definition of counselors’ core literacy to the research on their improvement strategies and cultivation paths. It can be seen that the research on the core literacy of counselors has some problems, such as unclear connotation and characteristics, unclear cultivation path, insufficient breadth and depth of research, which need to be solved urgently.