Online holiday shopping is exploding, and new data from Algolia shows just how big the surge really was. Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, shoppers generated 33.5 billion search queries, up 13% from last year. November overall hit 184 billion searches, a massive 61% YoY spike.

Algolia kept everything running with 99.999% uptime, even as traffic reached nearly 120,000 queries per second at peak.

So what were people looking for?

The top search growth came from:

• Pet Products: up 81% (the biggest surprise of the season)

• Apparel & Fashion: up 51%

• Health & Wellness: up 41%

• Home Goods: up 16%

Pets officially took over Cyber Weekend—shoppers might be cutting back on luxury splurges (down 49%), but not on spoiling their furry family members.

Algolia’s CEO Bernadette Nixon says the trends show consumers aren’t spending less—they’re spending smarter, focusing on comfort, wellness, value, and everyday joy.

How people shop is changing too. Nearly half of consumers now use AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT to compare products, find deals, or discover gift ideas. Only 23% are ready to buy directly inside AI tools, but that number is expected to grow as GenAI shopping gets smoother.

Another major insight: 72% of shoppers want retailers to use AI ethically, and say it will influence where they choose to shop. That puts pressure on brands to modernize their tech infrastructure for the “agentic AI era,” especially as peak season traffic gets even heavier.

Algolia says relevance and speed in search directly translate into revenue—every millisecond saved helps shoppers find what they want, boosts conversions, and keeps customers loyal.