Halloween is just a week away, which means it’s crunch time for figuring out a costume. And when it comes to find the funniest, scariest, and best ones, it makes sense that trick or treaters and adults alike turn to Google. People ‘google’ so much that the search giant’s name has become a verb. Embracing this honorary eponym, Google Trends has released a trove of data that not only reveals 2017’s most popular Halloween costume in the U.S. (Wonder Woman), but also breaks ideas down state by state.
Tracking the best costumes using with up-to-the-minute search results, the Google Frightgeist tool can display the data in several ways. First, there are the top trending costumes, nationally, which as of this writing are:
1. Wonder Woman
2. Harley Quinn
3. Clown
4. Unicorn
5. Rabbit
6. Witch
7. Mouse
8. Pirate
9. Zombie
10. Dinosaur
If you’re looking to dress local, however, you can flip a switch on the Frightgeist and find the top five outfits for your area. While the top five in your city may look similar to the national trends (Wonder Woman is in hot this year, after all), you could find a surprise entry for your state.
Curious about costuming in other places? Google has also included a Costume Map mode in Frightgeist, which lets you see which outfits are trending where. Unsurprisingly, with the release of the horror movie It, clowns are big in Stephen King’s home state of Maine. Pirates are popular in the coastal community of Naples, Fla., of course, and then there’s the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which are huge in Glendive, Mont., for reasons unknown.
If all that information still has you undecided, Google has also pulled together a Costume Wizard, which can help you pick an outfit based on a variety of factors, like spookiness level, classic versus modern, or level of uniqueness.
But if you want to be really spooky, you may want to consider being a Google data scientist. After all, it’s scary what search engine data can reveal about us.
