Celebrities have captured the imagination and interest of the rest of the public and the media for centuries, with their lives often being researched and discussed by people all across the globe. But which aspects of our lives do celebrities have the biggest influence on? By looking at Google search data for popular celebrities in different aspects of life we have been able to establish which parts of our everyday lives celebs influence us the most.
Moreover, we have been able to determine which celebrities we are most interested in for different aspects of life, as well as an overall ranking of the most popular.
Beauty
Despite having over 80 million fewer searches than those relating to the personal lives of our favourite celebrities, beauty came in second place, with 10.59 million searches. However, it is clear that beauty-related aspects of celebrity lives are some that greatly interest people, factors such as hair and makeup as well as face and body were used to find the celebrities with the most beauty searches.
1 – Kylie Jenner: 680,400 Annual Global searches
Despite only being 23 years old Kylie Jenner is one of the most influential women in the world and one of the chief reasons for this is her company Kylie Cosmetics and the company is perhaps one of the reasons why she had 180,000 annual searches for makeup. Kylie is also big into her fitness, and as a result, she also had 432,000 monthly body searches.
2 – Ariana Grande: 405,720 Annual Global searches
In second place is popstar Ariana Grande, who scored solidly across almost every category as she ranked in the top ten for four out of the five beauty related categories. She has the third-highest number of searches to do with her hair with 120,000 per year and 144,000 searches to do with her face.
3 – Kendall Jenner: 349,560 Annual Global Searches
Ranking two places lower than her younger sister Kendall Jenner still comes in an impressive third place with just under 350,000 searches for beauty related terms. Kendall has similar search numbers to Kylie for her hair, but far less makeup searches. Along with her siblings Jenner is extremely philanthropic and has recently used profits from her ZazaWorld brand to help coronavirus relief in poorer countries.
Homes
Where celebrities live is another aspect of life that influences our searches greatly as there were over 4.6 million searches for home-related terms. We looked at searches for celebrities houses, gardens, interiors and cars to find out which celebrities influenced our interest in homes the most.
1 – Will Smith: 256,800 Annual Global searches
Whilst he might have only been the Fresh Prince in a fictional TV show, Will Smith certainly lives like a prince as his main home is a Californian mansion valued at £32.3 million and this has helped propel him to the top of the rankings for home-related searches. In fact, 252,000 of his 256,800 monthly home-related searches are to do with his house.
2 – Justin Bieber: 201,600 Annual Global searches
The ‘Beliebers’ as they’re known, certainly have an interest in the home of their icon Justin Bieber. One of his main residences is a £18.7 million mansion in Beverly Hills, and he also has numerous other houses as well as one on ‘billionaires row’ in London. Bieber had 180,000 house searches per month, and also 21,600 to do with his cars.
2 – Michael Jordan: 201,600 Annual Global searches
In joint second place with Justin Bieber is sporting superstar Michael Jordan, the former NBA player also received over 200,000 home related searches over the past year. One of Jordan’s homes has been in the news recently (a 56 square foot mansion in Chicago) because he has been trying and failing to sell the £12 million property for over eight years.
Fashion
Fashion is an aspect of life that is of major importance to millions of people around the world, with the estimated value of the fashion industry in Great Britain alone standing at £26 billion. Out of the list of 200 celebrities that we looked at fashion was only the fourth most searched aspect with just over two million global annual searches.
1 – LeBron James: 297,600 Annual Global searches searches
Perhaps surprisingly it is a sporting star who is the runaway leader at the top of the fashion rankings with around 140,000 more searches than his nearest competitor. A large reason for this are searches to do with James’ shoes as this accounts for 288,000 annual searches. The LA Lakers star also has his own deal with Nike to sell his personalised brand of trainers.
2 – Kanye West: 157,320 Annual Global searches
In the middle of the basketballer sandwich at the top of the rankings we find superstar rapper Kanye West. The hip hop artist had over 157,000 annual fashion-related searches. Kanye is one of the few celebrities on the list to receive four-figure monthly search numbers in almost all of the categories.
3 – Michael Jordan: 137,160 Annual Global searches
Perhaps the most famous North American sportsman of all time is basketball legend Michael Jordan, and that monumentally successful career resulted in him securing a massive clothing deal with Nike. The Air Jordan brand has become incredibly popular and expensive over the years, and consequently, Jordan receives 137,160 fashion-related searches.
Fitness
An increasingly popular element of life is keeping fit and healthy, and this is reflected by interest in celebrities fitness routines and workout plans. In fact, celebrities influence this aspect of life by inspiring people to try and follow their example in getting into shape, from sporting professionals to actors celebrities have a huge influence on fitness.
1 – Joe Wicks: 291,600 Annual Global searches
Probably the celebrity on this list who specifically influences one aspect of life above all others is fitness instructor Joe Wicks, who as we see here ranks first for fitness despite only being 91st for the combined rankings. Wicks has had a rapid rise in popularity with his short, high-intensity workout videos resulting in 288,000 annual searches.
2 – Chris Hemsworth: 270,600 Annual Global searches
Australian actor Chris Hemsworth is known for playing the God of Thunder Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but he is also known for keeping in incredible shape for his numerous acting roles. As a result, he narrowly misses out on the top of the fitness rankings by 21,000 annually and less than 2,000 fewer a month.
3 – Dwayne Johnson: 67,320 Annual Global searches
Professional wrestler turned box office movie star Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson came in third in the rankings despite having almost 200,000 fewer searches than the two men above him. The Rock reportedly wakes up at 4am every day to start his workouts and trains six days a week to maintain his imposing physique.
Personal Life
By a landslide amount, the most popular aspect of life that celebrities influence is our personal lives, and we are massively interested in aspects of their personal lives. In total for the 200 celebrities that we looked at there were 96.44 million annual searches for elements of their personal lives, such as their family and relationships as well as how much they earn.
1 – Justin Bieber: 2,774,400 Annual Global searches
The celebrity who’s personal life influences the most is singing superstar Justin Bieber who has come a long way from the baby faced YouTube videos that thrust him into stardom as a teenager. Bieber has more searches to do with his relationships, but much fewer to do with his age and family.
2 – Shakira: 2,727,960 Annual Global searches
Columbian pop star Shakira comes in third place in the rankings just behind Biber with a few thousand less personal life related searches. Shakira’s age is the point of interest that appears to intrigue most people, as she very much doesn’t look all of her 44 years of age, she had a few thousand searches to do with her relationship with football superstar Gerard Pique.
3 – Kanye West: 2,697,120 Annual Global searches
Another musician completes the top three with rapper Kanye West achieving just under 2.7 million annual searches to do with his personal life. West has fairly recently been through a well publicised divorce from Kim Kardashian, but his relationships don’t seem to be the biggest area people find interesting. Instead it was West’s net worth which interested people the most with over 2.5 million annual searches.
Most Popular Celebrities/Influencers
When combining the areas of our lives that celebrities have the biggest influence on we find that Justin Beiber is the most searched celebrity for all the categories combined with over 3.2 million annual global searches.
Seven of the top ten overall ranking celebrities are successful singers such as Taylor Swift, Eminem, and Shakira. The highest-ranking singer is Kanye West who is the fourth highest-ranking celebrity, although he is well down on the two presidents ahead of him. The third highest-ranked celebrity is Kylie Jenner (eight places higher than her sister Kim), and along with Michael Jordan, the top ten is completed.
Methodology
We looked at 200 of the biggest celebrities in the world, taking a combination of those who are known as being influential in the five areas which we’ve decided to look at, as well as those who are just generally well known and influential figures.
For each, we took the number of global searches in the last twelve months for each of the related search terms, according to Google Ads’ Keyword Planner.
Donald Trump did rank highly but was removed from final results due to his removal from social media and therefore lack of ability to influence people online.
