NEW YORK — Levi’s has been the most popular brand of jeans, Louis Vuitton the top fashion label and Ugg boots the leading fashion trend searched for on America Online this year, according to data disclosed Tuesday.
And during last week’s holiday shopping, MSN Search was the favored search engine, compared with Google and Yahoo, for referrals to apparel and accessories sites, found online consumer researcher Hitwise. Two apparel categories ranked among the top 10 searched for on those three engines last week: prom dresses, placing sixth, and lingerie, eighth.
One reason for MSN’s predominance in fashion searches is that its share of female users ages 35 to 44 is larger than that commanded by either Google or Yahoo, said Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise. Too, rural shoppers, who have spottier access to fashion stores, are more strongly represented among MSN Search users than among users of Google and Yahoo, he added.
Apparel and accessories Web sites were the fifth most-frequently searched for shopping destinations via MSN, Google and Yahoo during the week ended Dec. 11, accounting for 6.2 percent of visits to retail and classified sites, up 3 percent from a week earlier but off 12 percent from a year ago. One fashion brand, Ugg boots, made the top 10 product brand searches in the week ended Dec. 11, ranking eighth, based on a Hitwise survey of more than 1,000 search engine and directory sites, with traffic dominated by referrals via MSN, Google and Yahoo.
A strong showing by luxury labels like Vuitton in consumer searches at AOL this year reflected both their popularity and, in some cases, the scarcity of such merchandise, noted Regina Lewis, an AOL online adviser and trend analyst. The Web has made such goods more readily available by offering another outlet for them, Lewis added. Vuitton and Coach garnered more than 500,000 queries apiece this year, an AOL spokeswoman said.
Coach was the second-most searched for fashion label, after Vuitton. Uggs was third, trailed by Gucci, Dooney & Bourke, Prada, Polo, Baby Phat, Steve Madden and Juicy Couture.
Meanwhile, in the world of jeans, Seven Jeans followed Levi’s as the most frequent search at AOL, then Lucky Jeans, Wrangler, Pepe, Lee, Apple Bottom, Guess, Citizens of Humanity and Bongo.
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Among searches based on fashion trends, throwback jerseys placed second behind category leader Ugg Boots. Vintage clothing was third most popular, followed by ponchos, Western wear, Gothic clothing, skateboard shoes, punk clothes, cowboy boots and Eighties fashion.
More broadly, the top words searched for via AOL this year were horoscopes, lyrics, hairstyles, foreclosures, salaries, cheats and codes, jobs, tattoos and IRS.
Britney Spears prompted the most searches for people, followed by Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Usher, Hilary Duff, Harry Potter, Pamela Anderson, Jessica Simpson and Orlando Bloom.
The most popular gadgets tracked via Web engines were cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, PDA devices, GPS devices, plasma TVs and HDTVs, laptops, printers, DVR, PVR and DVD recorders and telescopes.
AOL Search processes as many as 700 million search queries per month, according to Dulles, Va.-based America Online.