THE BRAZILIAN DOG BREEDS ARE IN THE LIST OF THE MOST POPULAR DOG BREEDS

A lot of people want to know how popular a certain dog breed is, but its great to see how that popularity has changed from last year too. In this article, we compare America, UK, Germany, Brazil not only with each other but also with the previous year for each dog breed rank.

Google Search Engine searches (number of unique exact searchers) are used to calculate dog breed popularity because it’s the most popular search engine on earth and its data is easily comparable across countries.

The tables show a six month average of monthly Google searches on Google (and its partners) up until Feb 2013, for the exact dog breed terms shown. If a dog breed exact term is represented in both years, then a % Change value is shown. For the dog breeds that don’t make it from 2011 to 2013, these are shown in the 2011 column in red font.  The 2011 data is a six month average up until Nov 2011.

AMERICA popular dog breed top 15 list 2013 V 2011

The top two dog breed places remained the same: [ german shepherd] followed by [pomeranian].

Then 2011’s 3rd, 4th, 5th place of golden retriever (93,750), english bulldog (74,000); german shepherd puppies (42,000) were swapped for the 2013 third to fifth placed dog breeds of: labrador retriever (59,083); german shepherd puppies (42,267); yorkshire terrier ( 48,000).

The very obvious characteristic of this breed list change is that only SIX of the dog breed search terms in Nov 2011 remained in the top fifteen list of 2013. You can see that the ones absent in the 2013 list have no % Change value, and the ones in 2011 but not in 2013 are shown in Red in the 2011 list.

AMERICA (USA) Notable changes to popular dog breed list:

the [labrador] of 2011 is now searched for under the term [Labrador retriever]

Seven of the dog breeds between position six and fifteen in 2013 are “puppies” variations of the breed.

In fact a dog breed + ‘puppies’ search is so trendy, that after the fifteenth dog breed on the 2013 list, the next EIGHT dog breeds are “puppies” variations.

The American dog associated search list is the largest volume of searches on earth, which means that the dog associated searches ‘tail’ is long and consistently high in volumes right to the end.

The ‘husky’ and ‘boxer’ dog breeds are new dog breeds in the 2013 list.

There are three variations of the Yorkshire terrier in the top fifteen list of 2013: yorkshire terrier (48,000) up 19%, yorkie puppies (28,467) and teacup yorkie (23,017). The last two are new entries into the top 15.

Near the bottom of both lists, there is movement in the bulldog varieties. The English bulldog (74,000) and Staffordshire bullterrier (20,833) of 2011 has been moved in 2013 to the English bulldog puppies (22,200) – ie no adult version, and the French bulldog (18,233) entering the list. The cockapoo has also dropped from 40,500 and ninth on the 2011 list to off the list and below 20,000.

UK  popular dog breed top 15 lists 2013 V 2011

Like the American list, there was a lot of change in the top fifteen dog breed list.  Only eight of the 2011 dog breeds made it into the 2013 list.

The top five dog breeds for 2013 are: [labrador] 32,100, [cocker spaniel] 32,100, [german shepherd] 25,467, [staffordshire bull terrier] 22,333, [cockapoo] 26,283

Most of the terms that were repeated between lists had a decline.

the top five dog breeds for 2011 were: [shih tzu] 34,333, [german shepherd] 27,283, [cocker spaniel] 28,100, [pomeranian] 24,650, [labrador] 19,600

The shih tzu was not in the UK top 15 list of 2011, and in neither list for America. In 2011 the only mention of shih tzu in the UK was [shih tzu puppies for sale] and it had a volume of around 12,000 (not in the top 15). There must be some serious marketing or organisation searching going on for this term to come from next to no searches in 2011 to be on the top of the UK list.

In the UK, the major dog breeds lost from the 2011 list were near the bottom of the list and were for “puppies for sale”  variations. The highest term lost from 2011 was the fifth term [cockapoo] (26,283)

While in America they now search mostly for [ labrador retreiver] in the UK they still just search for [labrador]

One of the most fascinating aspects of the list is that at the bottom of the UK 2011 list there were in 13th position: [boxer puppies for sale] 9,600 and 14th position  [husky puppies for sale] 8,450.   However in 2013  the first mention of a boxer variation is [boxer puppies] around 5,400, which is 35 ‘dog associated’ terms below the fifteenth highest dog breed AND  the first mention of husky is [husky puppies] even further down the list.  YET,  in America both the Husky and Boxer are firmly still in the top 15 of their most popular dogs.

GERMANY popular dog breed top 15 list 2013 V 2011

Germany is just across the channel from the UK, but it could not be much more different in its search habits for information on dogs.

Germany has near 90% market share by Google for search engine usage, so the massive drop off and thin tail of terms in the Google dog associated searches, and dog breed lists drop off volumes is just a function of the populations search habits in Germany, not a reflection on Google. Note the data reflects searches for all languages in Germany too.

While the top term in Germany has near twice the searches of the top term in the UK, the fifteenth term on the Germany list has 1,100 searches compared to the UK’s 9,967   Thus overall the UK search a lot more on ‘dog associated’ information on Google than Germans do.

The top five dog breeds for 2013 and 2011 were:

2013 dog breed list: [labrador] 51,333, [golden retriever] 34,333, [rottweiler] 23,833, [yorkshire terrier] 20,150,  [cocker spaniel] 14,350

2011 dog breed list: [labrador] 62,750, [golden retriever] 39,267, [yorkshire terrier] 22,333, [cocker spaniel] 14,800, [pomeranian] 8,050

As you can see, FOUR of the dog breeds in 2011 top five were the same in 2013. The big surprise is that the Rottweiler is now in third position in 2013 with an average search of 23,833 when in 2011 it had less than 99 searches according to Google.

Like the UK, a few of the dog breed terms lower on the list in 2011 were “puppies” variations. which in 2013 have been replaced by the adult dog breed versions.

The very curious part of this UK dog popularity list is that in 2011 German Shepherd was eighth on the list with volumes of near 1,000. Most other countries have this breed in their top three searches, even though the dog was created in Germany! On the 2011 list, there were also variants near the bottom of the fifteen such as [german shepherd dog], [German shepherd puppies] these had very low volumes too.

In 2013 in Germany, the [german shepherd] is thirteenth ranked dog breed with only 1,500 searches.

The shih tzu in 2013 is ranked sixth with 15,350 average monthly searches, while in 2011  it had under 100 searches per month. So it is massively rising in both the UK and Germany but not America.

BRAZIL popular dog breed top 15 list 2013 V 2011

2013  [rottweiler] 60,917, [golden retriever] 40,767, [shih tzu] 34,567, [labrador] 46,500, [yorkshire terrier] 9,733

2011  [labrador] 40,500, [golden retriever] 33,333, [yorkshire terrier] 7,100, [cocker spaniel] 7,850, [staffordshire bull terrier], 3,917

The top five from the 2011 list are in the top 15 of the 2013 list.

A big thing to note about this list is that the Rottweiler and the shih tzu which are number 1 and 3 respectively on the 2013 list, were not in the top 15 in 2011.

You can also see that after the second placed breed in 2011 the search volumes dropped of very fast, yet in 2013 The drop off doesn’t happen until fifth place.

Like other countries the term [labrador retriever] was in the top 15 list in 2013, however for Brazil so was the term [labrador], 3,500 at 10th place also exists.

CONCLUSION

Four of the five dog breeds that topped the American dog breed list in 2013 were on the 2011 list. However only six dog breeds of the top 15 in 2011 remained on the list in 2013.

The lower part of the 2013 America list has “puppies” versions of dog breeds.

The Yorkshire terrier was a strong presence (three versions) in 2013 in  America

In the UK:  the shih tzu came from below fifteenth in 2011 to top of the UK dog breed list with 34,333 average searches over six months.

In Germany Four of the top five dog breeds in 2013 were also in the top five in 2011. There were a lot of searches in germany in 2011 for “pupies” versions of dogs but very few in 2013. The rottweiler  from below 15th position in 2011 to third in 2013(23,833). This is great for a German origin dog, but bucking the trends of most other countries, the German shepherd was well out of the top five list at thirteenth position.

On all country lists [labrador] of 2011 seems to have been replaced by [labrador retriever] however Brazil had both terms in the top 15.

The [cockapoo]  has disappeared from most countries lists since 2011

TOTAL DOG BREED SEARCH VOLUME CHANGES

America top fifteen dog breed volumes decreased from 768k to 700k a drop of minus 9%

UK increased dog breed search volumes from 269k to 276k or + 2%

Germany increased dog breed searches from 154k to 199k or +30%

Brazilian dog breeds increased from 96k to 219K a jump of 128% – largely helped by increased computer usage in that country.