Yeezy tops search list for consumers seeking counterfeits

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 12, 2021

The problem of counterfeiting continues to be a major one for brands, despite years of efforts to eradicate the trade. Consumers still want to buy brands at cheap prices and a new report from OnBuy has shown exactly which brands are suffering most from interest in faked versions.

OnBuy used SEO toolset Ahrefs to find the average monthly search volumes of favourite luxury and higher-priced brands and found that Yeezy topped the list with almost global 62,000 searches a month on average. Most people were interested in shoes, hoodies and bags.

It was followed by Gucci on nearly 42,000 with Louis Vuitton in third place on just under 26,000.

Supreme and Chanel came next with just over 15,000 and 13,000 average monthly searches. 

It shows how the search for counterfeits has moved from the bustling physical markets that dominated the trade a couple of decades ago to online sites, a fact that would have been helped in 2020 by the faltering global tourist trade and the general consumer shift to online shopping.

Also in demand as far as counterfeits are concerned were Nike and Balenciaga, both seeing over 8,000 global monthly searches; Hermès, Off-White, Versace and Burberry were popular with between 5,000 and 8,000 searches; and Prada, Saint Laurent, Lacoste, Armani, Fendi, Calvin Klein, Dior, Vivienne Westwood and Tom Ford saw 4,11 searches or less.

OnBuy said it’s incredibly easy to find fakes online from some of these labels with YouTube and TikTok videos showing how to do it and celebrating purchases.

OnBuy also surveyed 4,300 British consumers and found that 22% of them own fake goods and 54% would consider buying a fake. Some 18% of respondents also said they’s bought a fake as a gift for someone and 67% of them didn’t tell the recipient it was counterfeit. Clearly messages about counterfeits supporting global criminal enterprises and terrorism aren’t getting through.