Google Trends say interest in vegan, personalised and giant easter eggs are at their highest levels ever

People in the UK hunting for Easter eggs online are being much more specific about what they are after than ever before, search data suggests.

Search interest in “personalised”, “giant”, “dark chocolate” and “vegan” Easter eggs is at its highest level ever according to figures provided by Google Trends.

The fastest growing of these queries is “vegan”, which has seen its search traffic more than double on last year’s Easter week. Although the obvious choice for those not consuming animal produce at this time of year is a dark egg, there are some other varieties available on the market including some white chocolate ones.

But a growing interest in vegan food is not just limited to Easter eggs. The past year has seen a huge rise in the number of Google search queries for recipes omitting meat, fish, dairy, eggs and honey.

There are no official figures on the number of vegans in the UK, but back in 2006 the Vegan Society estimated the number was around 150,000 so it is likely to have grown considerably since then. A couple of years ago the BBC also reported a growing trend it called “part-time” veganism.

However, despite the increase in interest, these specialist eggs make up a relatively small part of online interest in Easter products. The most popular among the ones featured here are giant eggs, which make up 4% of Easter egg searches since the start of March. And when you expand that to include searches for large and big eggs that proportion increases to 8%.

Nevertheless, one in 50 searches are for vegan Easter eggs, which actually makes them a more popular search query than dark chocolate ones (one in 100).

The UK’s most popular chocolate at Easter has historically been the Cadbury’s Creme Egg. However, sliding sales were reported last year after the manufacturer decided to change the product’s recipe.