Pop-culture trends observed in search behavior point to a 1,400% spike in searches for “red lipstick” and “red scarves” after the release of Taylor Swift’s “Red,” re-recorded versions of 20 songs from the Red deluxe edition of recordings.

Since search indicates a shopper’s preferences, it’s important for retailers to optimize site search to account for common misspellings and other nuances, as observed in Searchspring’s data analysis. 

Searchspring analyzed data from the 16B annual searches on its platform, looking specifically for these insights at the search, merchandising and personalization server requests from the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.

When looking at what’s popular in movies and entertainment, Searchspring found the top search terms for 2021 pointed to the popularity of Disney and Marvel.  

Retailers should account for possible keystroke error, optimizing searches so shoppers don’t see a “No results” message for misspellings, similar to the way Google returns options for words in queries when misspelled.  

Ecommerce site searches for Disney-related items rose 166% this year, compared with Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend (BFCM) 2020. The misspelling of “‘disnei” in 2020 also included the typo “black Fridai.”

“Star Wars” took the second spot in Searchspring’s analysis of pop-culture ecommerce searches, despite search volume being down 27%, compared with the prior year during BFCM.

While searches fell 15%, “Batman” reminded strong. “Batman” took the No. 3 spot for the search term related to Searchspring’s analysis of pop-culture searches. 

Despite being a top search term during BFCM 2020, Searchspring did not observe any site searches for “Mandalorian” this year.

Observations from the top search categories during the 2021 BFCM weekend also point to clothing as the big winner in 2021, with search volume rising 288% this year, compared with 2020. 

Searches specific to shoes rose 200% compared with last year. Searches for housewares fell 16%, ecommerce searches in the entertainment category fell 21%, and the pet category jumped 64%.

People are going out again, which is reflected in searches for apparel. Searches for clothing rose 2021, compared with 2020. The top two search terms in 2021 were not even on the list in 2020.

Searches for pants rose 243% in 2021, compared with 2020. Dresses rose to No. 2 in 2021. Last year, they did not appear in the top 10. Bodysuits, jumpsuits and sweater dresses are now on the list of searches. These categories saw searches increasing anywhere between 243% and 573%, compared with 2020 search volume.