Royal Wedding ignites online feeding frenzy

Google searches for "Royal Wedding" up 90%, eBay "Royal" category sales up 1800%

Did you guys know that Prince William and Kate Middleton were engaged? Well they totally got married this morning! Yeah, for reals! And the online world has exploded with Royal Wedding frenzy.

Google reported Thursday evening that searches for “Royal Wedding” were up 90% worldwide since the beginning of April, and even less common search phrases seeing record high searches. For example, searches for “Royal Wedding Carriage” were up a bizarre 70% since March (when the Royal Wedding carriage was first announced). Even searches for “Royal Wedding Flowers” and “Kate’s Choice of Coat” have skyrocketed over the last month. Even searches for “Royal Wedding Fruitcake” were up 15% over the last month.

Despite all that, the Royal Couple still has nothing on Justin Bieber searches. I thought for sure that more people would be doing Royal Wedding searches, but nope, Bieber’s global search rates are still lightyears ahead of Will and Kate’s.

And the skyrocketing Google searches for all things Royal translate directly into higher online sales for e-commerce sites like eBay, which reported recently that sales for Prince William memorabilia were up a ridiculous 12,491% over 2010 on eBay.co.uk. Additionally, the “Royal” category was up 132% over 2010. Meanwhile, in the U.S., monthly searches for Royal Wedding items on eBay.com were up 1,815% in 2011, with searches for Kate Middleton merchandise five times higher than searches for Prince William items.

In April, alone, more than $70,000 and 3,000 items with some kind of Royal Wedding affiliation were sold on eBay, including cardboard cutouts of the Royal Couple, Royal Pez dispensers, and a replica of the Royal Engagement dress. The most expensive item sold was a Kate Middleton/Princess Diana replica engagement ring, which sold for $1,500…which concerns me, because my mother recently turned up with a Kate Middleton/Princess Diana replica engagement ring…so I’m hoping she wasn’t the buyer. That would be…creepy. Almost as creepy as this picture I recently made.