With Halloween just around the corner, Google has decided to map the most popular Halloween costumes by location, using data from Google searches.
The project is called Frightgeist, and has an interactive map that’ll let you toggle over certain American cities to see what users there are searching for. In Alpena, Michigan for instance, a lot of people are searching for Daenerys Targaryen costumes. Presque Isle, Maine residents are partial to clowns, while those in Glendive, Montana want to be Batgirl. A lot of other locations seem to have people who are after that Halloween mainstay — pirates.
The Frightgeist site also has a national ranking of the 504 most popular costumes. Harley Quinn and Star Wars top the list, with Princess Leia ranking as the most popular Star Wars character to show up in Google’s costume searches (it doesn’t specify whether people are likelier to dress up as regular Leia or Jabba the Hut slave Leia). The least popular? Jessica Rabbit.
Google wants people to use this tool to head in a more creative direction with their costumes: “Before you go chopping up a perfectly good white bedsheet, pick something a bit more unique this year.” Then again, nothing’s more annoying than a ton of people failing to recognize your clever costume: “What are you? Oh.”
(Via Frightgeist)