The Most-Searched Fragrance In Every US State 2026: 8 States Reject Old Spice
Original research by Perfume Legit. May 2026. Methodology: Google Trends 12-month interest by region (US), analyzed across 30 of the most-talked-about fragrances of 2024–2026, including designer staples, viral TikTok scents, and niche luxury launches. Data downloadable below.
Old Spice rules America. Eight states refuse to play along.
If you Google the most-searched cologne in your state, the answer is almost certainly the same as 42 of your neighbors: Old Spice. The 88-year-old American grooming staple dominates Google search interest in 43 US states and the District of Columbia, beating out luxury icons like Dior Sauvage, Chanel Bleu, and Tom Ford in head-to-head search volume.
But the more interesting story is hiding in the eight states that refuse to fall in line.
Perfume Legit analyzed 12 months of Google Trends data across 30 of the most-talked-about fragrances of 2024-2026, including designer staples, viral TikTok launches, niche luxury houses, and celebrity scents. We mapped which fragrance ranks #1 in every US state. Forty-three out of 51 regions converged on the same answer. Eight didn't. And those outliers reveal a quietly powerful trend in American fragrance taste.
The 8 states that reject Old Spice, and what they search for instead
| State | #1 Searched Fragrance | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Coco Mademoiselle (Chanel) | Designer luxury |
| Louisiana | Polo Blue (Ralph Lauren) | Designer men's |
| Mississippi | Polo Blue (Ralph Lauren) | Designer men's |
| Montana | Marc Jacobs Daisy | Designer women's |
| New Mexico | Ariana Grande Cloud | Celebrity / viral |
| North Dakota | Glossier You | Niche / clean beauty |
| South Dakota | Coco Mademoiselle (Chanel) | Designer luxury |
| Vermont | Glossier You | Niche / clean beauty |
Each state is colored by its #1 searched fragrance over the past 12 months. The eight non-Old-Spice states stand out clearly against the dominant Old Spice purple.
What the outliers tell us about the future of American fragrance
Three patterns jump out of these eight outliers. None of them are random.
1. Vermont and North Dakota are the front edge of the clean-beauty fragrance movement. Both states crowned Glossier You (a launch-pricing niche-style scent from the indie-darling beauty brand) as their top search. These are two of the most rural, low-population states in the country, and yet they're indexing harder on a clean-girl-aesthetic fragrance than New York or California. Glossier's "less makeup, better skin" ethos has clearly seeped into fragrance preference far outside the coastal beauty bubble.
2. The Deep South wants Polo Blue, not Old Spice. Louisiana and Mississippi both rank Ralph Lauren's Polo Blue as their #1. A step up the price ladder from drugstore Old Spice into department-store designer territory, but still firmly within American men's fragrance traditions. This isn't a niche-luxury rebellion; it's a quiet aspirational shift within the mainstream.
3. New Mexico is having a celebrity-fragrance moment. The state's #1 search is Ariana Grande Cloud, the singer's $25-to-$70 sweet-musk launch that has generated more cultural conversation than any celebrity fragrance since SJP Lovely. New Mexico's pop-culture-forward search behavior puts it ahead of better-known celebrity-fragrance markets like California and Florida.
4. Alaska, South Dakota, Montana: the rural luxury triangle. Alaska and South Dakota both pick Coco Mademoiselle, Montana picks Marc Jacobs Daisy. Three of the most sparsely-populated states in the country are searching harder for designer women's fragrance than any of the 50 most-populated metros. The likely driver: gift-giving culture in close-knit communities, where a known luxury name carries social weight.
What the rest of America is searching for
Across the 43 Old Spice states, the second-place fragrance pattern reveals which contenders are quietly building national reach. Polo Blue takes second place in 18 states, almost all in the South and Northeast. Glossier You is the runner-up in 16 states, meaning even where Old Spice wins, clean beauty is the next obsession. Together, those numbers suggest Polo Blue and Glossier You are the two fragrances most likely to topple Old Spice in the next two to three years if the current trajectory holds.
Methodology
Perfume Legit pulled Google Trends interest-by-region data (geographic resolution = US state, time horizon = 12 months ending May 2026) for 30 fragrances selected to represent the breadth of American fragrance search behavior: men's designer staples (Dior Sauvage, Bleu de Chanel, Acqua di Gio Profondo), women's bestsellers (Coco Mademoiselle, La Vie Est Belle, Black Opium), niche luxury (Maison Francis Kurkdjian Baccarat Rouge 540, Le Labo Santal 33, Tom Ford Lost Cherry), viral / TikTok-driven scents (Sol de Janeiro Cheirosa 62, Phlur Missing Person, Glossier You), and celebrity fragrances (Ariana Grande Cloud).
For each US state and DC, we identified the fragrance with the highest relative search interest score (Google Trends 0–100 scale). State-level rankings reflect search volume relative to total search activity within that state, normalized across the 30-fragrance set.
Limitations: Google Trends scores are relative, not absolute volume. The set is intentionally curated rather than exhaustive. A state's "winning" fragrance is the most-searched within our 30-fragrance index, not necessarily the single most-searched fragrance in the entire Google index. Excluding Old Spice from the analysis would surface different state-level winners that are obscured by its mass-market dominance.
About this study
This analysis is published as part of Perfume Legit's ongoing research into American fragrance behavior. Perfume Legit is a Texas-based independent fragrance retailer that maintains research-grade product dossiers (covering scent composition, performance benchmarks, climate scoring, and perfumer attribution) for every fragrance in our 3,000+ catalog. Founder: Ahmad Khan.
For data requests, custom analyses, or expert commentary on US fragrance trends, contact info@perfumem.com.
Underlying data: raw_interest_by_state.csv | winning_fragrance_per_state.csv
Cite this study:
Perfume Legit. (2026). The Most-Searched Fragrance In Every US State 2026. Retrieved from https://perfumelegit.com/blogs/news/most-searched-fragrance-by-state-2026