Huda Beauty in demand: Kattan's cosmetic empire tops 2020 beauty brand ranking

New data shows the Dubai entrepreneur's brand has come out on top in terms of Google and social rankings

Huda Beauty has been named the world's most in-demand beauty brand by price comparison website, Cosmetify. Courtesy Huda Beauty 

Huda Beauty’s status as the world's most in-demand cosmetics line has been confirmed once again by beauty price comparison website, Cosmetify.

The Cosmetify Index, which was started by the site in 2019, ranks the world's biggest beauty brands using five criteria: Google search volume, increase in searches, Instagram followers, hashtags and engagement.

The latest figures, analysing July to September 2020, show that of the 1,710 beauty brands it ranks, Huda Beauty is the most searched and purchased.

According to the British website's figures, Huda Beauty comes out on top, followed by Anastasia Beverly Hills and Mac Cosmetics.

"Huda Beauty has consistently taken top spot in our ranking, which is little surprise when you see the numbers, with 47.9 million followers on Insta and 27 million hashtag mentions, too," the data reads. "However, it’s been an interesting quarter for the brand, which saw Huda Kattan herself step down as chief executive of the company and focus her energies on other aspects of this."

The top 10 is rounded out by The Body Shop, Florence by Mills, L'Oreal Paris, Yves Rocher, ColourPop Cosmetics, Pur and Morphe.

In addition to the most searched brands, the index also ranks the most powerful beauty influencers. Kattan was named as most powerful beauty influencer for the first time, with the potential to command an estimated $121,000 per sponsored post. In second and third spots are James Charles and Bretman Rock.

The site explains: "While the top three all switched places, there was significant movement further down our influencer rankings, with the likes of Mari Maria jumping from 13th to 6th and Bianca Heinicke rising from 16th to 8th, while Antonio Garza and Safiya Nygaard were among those to fall down the rankings.

"It's also interesting to note that Jeffree Star saw his following decline by over 1.5 million people, after a number of high-profile controversies."

Huda Beauty was founded in 2013 by makeup artist-turned-blogger Kattan. Seeing the reach the internet – Instagram in specific – could have, long before most of her competitors, the Iraqi-American entrepreneur won scores of devoted followers for her authentic, warts-and-all tutorials.

As the following grew, Kattan enlisted her sister Mona as company president, while she took the role of chief executive. Huda Beauty now turns over $250 million a year, and is worth an overall $1.2 billion.