Angry Birds, Ewoks and Lady Gaga:The Most Popular Halloween Costumes of 2011

With Halloween finally upon us, Google has released some very interesting facts about this year's Halloween costume searches, using Insights for Search, and some of their super-secret internal data. So while Halloween 2010 was dominated by searches for Lady Gaga, Iron Man and even The Jersey Shore's Snooki, this year, the focus had changed drastically, with costume ideas coming from the unlikeliest of sources.

The costume search of Halloween 2011 was, according to Google's Official Blog, was all about two very specific types of birds, namely 'black swans' and 'angry birds'. Searches for the phrase 'angry birds costume' have risen over the year, and Google have reported that they've seen 10 times more search volume for the phrase, when compared to the same time last year. However, during mid-October searches for the phrase 'angry birds costume' were overtaken by 'black swan costume', thanks to the popularity of the Oscar-winning Darren Aronofsky thriller of the same name, which starred Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Aspects of the Black Swan costume also proved to be very popular, with searches for 'black tutu', 'black corset', and even 'white swan' grew in popularity in the run up to the 31^st of October.

Besides furious fowls and dancing swans, Google's search statistics also pointed to a number of popular figures from TV shows, films, famous musicians and comic book characters as being the inspiration for Halloween costumes this year, with 'Wilfred', 'Tron', 'Captain America', 'Nicki Minaj' and 'Lady Gaga', the latter two of which are currently fighting it out to be the most popular in search rankings, proving to be some of the most sought-after costumes of 2011.

But probably one of the oddest searches this Halloween, is the large amount of searches of 'dog costume', and this is not a dog costume for humans to wear, this means a Halloween costume for a dog. Yes, some people really do this. So if you're interested in this endeavor, whether it's through sceptical disbelief or whether you're inspired to dress up your pooch for next year, some of the most popular searches were for 'dog raptor costume'. 'dog ewok costume' and even 'dog alligator costume'. If you don't believe me, check out this table below from Google:

So, whether you're planning on dressing up as Lady Gaga, an Angry Bird or even dressing up one of your pets and then going guising, as we say in Scotland, everyone here at QueryClick wishes you a very Happy Halloween!