Need some Halloween costume inspiration? Google Frightgeist has loads of suggestions
Google is using search data from September to predict which costumes we’ll see this Halloween (and where we’ll see them).
The popular search engine is celebrating spooky season by bringing back Frightgeist – a collection of Halloween’s most searched-for costumes compiled from Google Trends data.
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According to Google, the most searched for Halloween costume theme this year is (perhaps unsurprisingly) ‘IT’.
This is followed by classics such as ‘Witch’, ‘Spider-Man’ and, uh, ‘Fortnite’. Meanwhile, the most popular couples costume for 2019 is ‘Lilo and Stitch’ and ‘good-for-groups’ brings up the ‘Descendants’.
The most important data is, of course, the pet costume search, which brings up adorable options from ‘Demogorgon dog’ (‘demodog?) and ‘UPS dog’ (pictured above − you’re welcome), to September’s leading search term ‘Chucky dog’.
Frightgeist is designed to give savvy costume hunters an insight into what could be the hottest Halloween looks of 2019. Users can then use this info to get their group costumes ready to go, avoid being the third Pennywise at their house party or to make sure they choose a costume people will actually recognise this year.
It uses September search data from Google Trends to pull the top 500 costume searches in the US and pins them to a map so you know exactly which outfits are trending in various locations.
Unfortunately, this means that there is no UK data or UK-based map to navigate, but the majority of the costumes reflect pop culture characters that have taken Europe by storm too so the data is still super useful.
You can toggle the top 50 costumes nationally or locally to get a bit of insight into what costumes people are putting together around you ranked by how many people are searching for them, while clicking ‘show more’ will open your search up to over 600 results.
Clicking on a costume will reveal what category it resides in and just how popular it is set to be this Halloween.
You can find similar info by hovering over specific locations on the map or simply use the search bar for seek out a particular outfit and have a peak at where exactly that look is trending in the States.
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If you’re seriously at a loss for what to wear to creep your friends out this October 31, Frightgeist also features a costume wizard. Here you can basically generate a custom look based on key criteria such as ‘uniqueness level’, modern or classic ‘style’, a location based ‘trend meter’ and, of course, ‘spookiness level’ (out of 100).
If you’re interested in finding out more about what people are wearing near you, Google Trends Frightgeist 2019 is available now.
Image credit: California Costumes via Amazon