Brandwatch Bulletin #69: The Internet's Favorite Dogs

There can only be one.

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Today we’re taking a look the internet’s favorite dog breeds. Apologies if you’re a cat person.

Let’s get to it.

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Top dogs

After previously looking at the internet’s favorite composers and movies, today we’re looking at dog breeds. Last year we reported on the increase in pet ownership during the pandemic, so now it’s time to see which breed comes out on top.

To get started we needed a list of dog breeds. To create this, we used the top ten breeds that get registered in the UK and the US. With duplicate breeds removed, it left us with 14 to look at.

To collect our mentions we used Brandwatch Search which employs AI and Entities to make sure you get data on the exact subject you’re trying to study. For example, Brandwatch Search can discern whether a mention with the phrase “German Shepherd” is referring to a type of dog or a shepherd who lives in Bavaria.

Now to the data.

To start, we found out which dog breeds generate the most conversation online.

It’s fairly close at the top, but Labradors have pipped Poodles to the post. This fits with the data on the most registered breeds, with Labradors taking first place in the UK and the US. When looking at adoption vs purchasing mentions, Labradors also came top in both.

Having said that, the size of the Poodle conversations is a surprise. While they’re the 6th most registered breed in the US, they don’t even make the top 20 in the UK. Maybe this is a sign that they’re on their way up and demand for them is growing.

But mentions are only one part of the picture. Now let’s look at sentiment.

For this, we simply removed the neutral mentions, and subtracted the negative mention percentage value from the positive mention one. It’s a similar approach to working out a politician’s net approval.

Here’s what we found.

To start, not a single breed got more negative mentions than positive ones, proving that all dogs are good dogs (not that this needed proving). In fact, the net sentiment of the entire dog breed conversation was 40%, a very strong number.

Interestingly Labradors don’t rank too highly on net sentiment. Instead French and English Bulldogs are up top, with the latter type way out in front at 62%. Similarly to Poodles, ownership isn’t that high for English Bulldogs – they place 5th in the US. Could this signal a rising demand for the breed?

At the other end of the table we have Rottweilers and Pugs. This makes sense as Rottweilers have a bad reputation (although one that many say is undeserved), while Pugs can face a lot of health issues.

Of course, we can’t write about dogs and not include a picture. Based on the Brandwatch Reach metric, here’s the picture within the dog breed conversation that was seen by the most people. He went with the name Gert if you wanted to know.

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, but we’ll be back on Friday. If you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team

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