One of the hottest products this year is the Zhu Zhu Pet, an electronic pet hamster that is selling out of retailers all over the country. Searches jumped for ‘zhu zhu’ related-terms last week as compared to the previous week: ‘zhu zhu hamster’ increased 53%, ‘zhu zhu pets’ increased 135% and ‘zhu zhu’ increased 107%.

There were 278 variations of the search term ‘zhu’ last week, with many of the queries including the words ‘where’ and ‘in-stock’ since the pets have become increasingly hard to come by as the holidays approach. Any retailers that have the Zhu Zhu Pets in-stock should make sure that they are including these location-based keywords in their SEM strategy.

The manufacturer’s website for the toy received the highest share of searches for ‘zhu zhu pets’ last week, followed by Amazon and Yahoo!. The popularity of the toy has created a strong secondary market where the robotic hamsters are selling for far higher than their original price on websites like Amazon and eBay.

Join us for our a webinar next Wednesday on the season’s Hot Products and Using Hitwise to Stay Focused this Holiday Season.