The recent heat wave in the US has sent many in search of air conditioners to keep cool last week with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees in parts of the country. The share of search clicks on the term ‘air conditioners’ increased 268% for the week ending July 10, 2010 over the previous week and air conditioners ranked 3rd out of over 1,000 products included in a portfolio of top Appliances & Electronics.

Portable air conditioners have become a popular segment and ranked 2nd among all variations of ‘air conditioner’ and the keyword ‘portable’ was included in 185 queries. Last week, Mitsubishi, Goodman and LG were the top searched brands of air conditioners, highlighting opportunities for merchandising and search campaigns based upon consumer demand.

Bestbuy.com and Walmart.com received the highest share of traffic from searches on ‘air conditioners’ last week among websites in the Shopping & Classifieds category. Despite the recent demand for air conditioners, the share of paid search traffic for the term was just under 3% last week, suggesting that retailers may want to invest in paid campaigns to capitalize upon the increase in search activity.

My colleague Heather Hopkins also wrote about our neighbors to the north in Canada that are also on the hunt for ACs.