Launched in 2019, the ‘Cosmetify Index’ ranks the world’s biggest beauty brands on factors such as their social reach and engagement as well as searches on the comparison platform and on the web. While Huda Beauty, Anastasia Beverly Hills and MAC Cosmetics continue to top the list of the global hottest brands, the pandemic has impacted the pandemic had a significant impact on the desirability of several brands compared to the last refresh of the Index, which came just as the coronavirus outbreak was taking hold.

Top global beauty brands

Five major factors were taken into account to reveal the 200 hottest beauty brands of 2020: increase in search interest as shown on Google Trends, overall brand searches each month, number of Instagram tags and followers, and the brand’s ’engagement rate’ on the social platform.

Globally, the top 10 hottest brands in Q3 2020 are:

1. Huda Beauty
2. Anastasia Beverly Hills
3. MAC Cosmetics
4. The Body Shop
5. Florence by Mills
6. L’Oréal Paris
7. Yves Rocher
8. ColourPop Cosmetics
9. PÜR
10. Morphe

Country’s choice

The report also reveals every country’s favourite beauty brand based on search volume. While in previous years, the picture has largely been dominated by Yves Rocher, this time around it was an even split between the French brand and The Body Shop, which were both the top brand in 31 different countries around the world.

ColourPop was the favourite beauty brand of 2020 in the United States, while Glossier was at the top of the list in 2019. In Brazil, Foreo is the favourite of 2020, while it was Maybelline in 2019. France’s 2020 favourite is Yves Rocher and UK’s 2020 favourite is The Body Shop.

Most Searched Brands of Q3 2020

1. The Body Shop
2. Yves Rocher
3. Lush
4. Rituals
5. ColourPop Cosmetics
6. Morphe
7. Olaplex
8. Clinique
9. Kiehl’s
10. Estée Lauder

2020’s Rising Stars of Beauty

The year has been tough for all kinds of industries, not just beauty, but searches for cosmetics have been down across the board. However, there are still some companies which have seen interest on the up in the last quarter and not only hygiene and health related names! PÜR Cosmetics saw an increase of 337.9% - the biggest spike in searches throughout Q3, while Kitsch, who are best known for their designer hair products, saw interest grow by more than double. Merci Handy, who had the biggest increase in popularity in the last edition of the index, is still benefitting from the current situation. Their colourful hand gels made using clean ingredients, have understandably been in high demand over the last couple of months.

Biggest social following

Huda Beauty remains by far the most followed beauty brand on Instagram. At the latest count, the brand had over 47.9 million followers, steadily closing in on the 50 million mark after adding around 4 million new followers since the last edition of the index. Once again, they’re followed by Kylie Cosmetics (24.8 million) and M·A·C Cosmetics (23.4 million).

Huda Beauty also takes the crown when it comes to the highest number of hashtag mentions on Instagram, with over 27 million people posting about Huda and her products. That’s an increase of about 2 million from quarter 1. Anastasia Beverly Hills and M·A·C Cosmetics are ranked 2nd and 3rd, respectively.

Read the full report: Cosmetify Index Q3 2020