Data: Most popular pet breeds in America

Cute pets. (Pexels)

Welcome to Data Drop! We hope this edition of the newsletter is not a mastiff waste of your time. We hope it doesn’t give you paws. Don’t worry, we’ll cut to the chase -- it’s the pet breeds data drop you’ve been waiting for!


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🐾 Most popular pet breeds in America 🐾

We can’t all be winners, right? But when it comes to pets -- it’s hard to call one of them “unpopular,” because they’re probably just as cute as the most popular. Cuteness is in the eye of the beholder.

Recently, Filter King compiled thousands of Google search trends to rank the most popular dog and cat breeds in the U.S., and honestly, some of the results were a little surprising.

First off, this method of compiling data to find a trend is not definitive. Who knows why anyone is using Google to search for a breed. Maybe they just wanted to see a photo, or just like a certain breed of cat? The data itself cannot say with 100% confidence that someone searching for one of these breeds actually got that breed as a pet. So just keep that in mind as we go through this.

🐕 Dog breeds 🐕

The results for the most popular dogs in every state are quite varied, with four different breeds coming top in at least one state. The most common winner is the French bulldog, claiming victory in twenty states all the way from California to Massachusetts.

In Michigan, the most popular dog breed by search was the Cane Corso, an Italian breed of mastiff. The Cane Corso took the top spot in nineteen states including Georgia and Colorado, while the Australian Shepherd was the most popular breed in ten states including Vermont, Utah, and Alaska.

(Filter King)

The Golden Retriever and German Shepherd came in fourth and fifth, followed by the Rottweiler, Pomeranian, Yorkshire Terrier, Shiba Inu and the Shih Tzu.

For what’s it’s worth, Rover released a similar list earlier this year, and the Labrador Retriever, Golden and German were the top three. Rover used its own database of dogs. Here’s the full top 10 list.

(Filter King)

🐈 Cat breeds 🐈

Ok, finally, we’re on to the cat portion -- the better portion. (Sorry, I’m admittedly a cat person).

The rankings for this one are a bit less dramatic: the Maine coon came out on top in every single US state! The Bengal, Savannah, Siamese and Munchkin cat breeds rounded out the top five.

“The Maine coon is known to have a friendly and intelligent personality, while its gentle and social nature makes it a great choice for people with families and other pets.”

(Filter King)

Editor’s note: The Savannah and Maine Coon photos are mixed up!

Rover had a similar list for most popular cat breeds, so I think the cat list lines up closer to other data we’ve seen.

Hey, are you a big pets person? Click here to sign up for our weekly All 4 Pets Newsletter -- it features helpful tips and resources for pet owners, fun stories, viral videos and more.


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- Ken Haddad, ClickOnDetroit data team


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About the Author:

Ken Haddad has proudly been with WDIV/ClickOnDetroit since 2013. He also authors the Morning Report Newsletter and various other newsletters, and helps lead the WDIV Insider team. He's a big sports fan and is constantly sipping Lions Kool-Aid.