While there are plenty of gift guides to be found on the web, Google is able to offer something more than a prediction of hot gifts for the season; they can tell us what’s actually popular, right here and right now. The Google Insights tool allows searchers to examine data for keyword, and thus product, search trends. From time to time, they also release a list of items that are performing especially well.
On December 8th, they released just such a list on the Google retail blog. In it, they showed five gifts that are seeing a huge climb in popularity this holiday season.
5. Snuggies
This “blanket that you can wear” has more than doubled in searches since we hit the fall season. While a lot of this can be credited to the cold weather, there have been continued surges around the Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
4. Sing-a-Ma-Jigs
The Sing-a-Ma-Jig is on the rise, having doubled in search popularity since July. Not only do they talk, but they even sing gibberish but clearly happy songs when you press on their tummies.
3. Monster High Dolls
While many dolls are seeing increased search volume, “Monster High Dolls,” who are teenage renditions of famous monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula, have seen the biggest boom yet — having tripled in popularity since the beginning of November.
2. The Nerf Stampede
The Nerf stampede is a unique Nerf gun — since it’s battery-powered and fully-automatic. This Hasbro product has seen a 60 percent increase since the beginning of November.
1. Pillow Pets
Maybe it’s a testament to earlier development of multitasking skills that these stuffed animal pillows are seeing such a rise in popularity. They’ve doubled in popularity since the beginning of November, with an especially high Black Friday peak.
These are just a few of the popular products this holiday season. Do your own searches on Google Insights to find the details for other popular items.
