Dubai-based Huda Beauty takes the top spot as the global hottest cosmetic brand of the year, according to Cosmetify.

To determine the ranking, the comparison platform has taken five factors into account: the increase in consumer interest as shown on Google Trends, the overall brand searches each month, the number of Instagram hashtags and followers, and the brand’s ’engagement rate’ on the social platform.

Based on these criteria, the 10 most popular beauty brands of 2019 are:

#1 Huda Beauty
#2 Anastasia Beverly Hills
#3 MAC Cosmetics
#4 Yves Rocher
#5 Florence by Mills
#6 Kylie Cosmetics
#7 Jeffree Star Cosmetics
#8 Rude Cosmetics
#9 Maybelline
#10 Foreo

Fronted by founder Huda Kattan, Huda Beauty has seen a meteoric rise in the last six years. Huda has transformed a beauty blog into a now USD 1.2 billion empire for 2019. "This brand is backed by empowering messages and a strong female role model, perfect for 2019 and beyond," commented Cosmetify.

Huda Kattan was also named the Most Powerful Individual of Beauty in 2019, before Millie Bobby Brown and Kylie Jenner. With a social following of almost 40 million, Huda is one of the most influential people on Instagram and rakes in an estimated USD 18,000 per sponsored post.

2019’s Rising Stars of Beauty (individuals who have seen the biggest increase in consumer interest compared to 2018 according to Google Trends data) are also revealed in the report, with Kristen Ess, Jeffree Star and Ole Henriksen coming out on top.

To come back to the brands, Cosmetify also ranked the most searched globally (based on the average number of monthly searches on Google):

#1 Yves Rocher, (2,169,32)
#2 The Body Shop (861,020)
#3 Clinique (757,710)
#4 Estée Lauder (600,280)
#5 Maybelline (581,110)
#6 Glossier (538,440)
#7 Dove (450,000)
#8 Kylie Cosmetics (434,650)
#9 MAC (423,56)
#10 Huda Beauty (395,69)

Of course, the results vary strongly from one country to another, with Glossier being the USA’s favourite beauty brand of 2019 and France’s heritage brand Yves Rocher topping the list in Canada, France, Germany, Russia. L’Oréal’s Maybelline is strong in South America, while Natura’s The Body Shop tops the list in the UK, Australia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

As well as looking at brands by country, the research also looks into the most followed on Instagram (Huda Beauty, MAC Cosmetics and Dolce & Gabbana), who’s getting the best engagement (Florence by Mills, Merci Handy, Jeffree Star), or the most tagged (Huda Beauty and Anastasia Beverly Hills).

The full Cosmetify Index is available here.