We did an analysis of  2008 data for images with the keyword ‘cat’ vs. ‘dog’ to see how they did overall. It doesn’t matter what metric you look at, it’s not even close – dogs rule!

Image Volume

There were twice as many images tagged with the keyword ‘dog’ as opposed to ‘cat’ in our system. This is interesting when you consider that according to the American Vetinerary Medical Association, cats outnumbered dogs in the USA in 2007 (81 million cats vs. 72 million dogs.)

Cats vs. Dogs - Image Volume

Royalties per Image

In addition to there being more images of dogs, they also earned more per image and were downloaded more frequently. Royalties earned per image for dog images were twice those earned by cat images.

Cats vs. Dogs - Royalties Per Image

Images of dogs also had 30% more downloads per image than those of cats.

Cats vs. Dogs - Downloads Per Image

Total Earnings

This translates to dogs earning over 4x more than cats in 2008.

Cats vs. Dogs - Total Earnings

I’m confident that dog-lovers everywhere knew that their beloved pets would come out ahead, but it’s nice to see it in the data. Let me know your thoughts and whether you see similar things in your portfolios. Also, if you’re interested in specific keywords, let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do.

(Full Disclosure: I am a dog owner, but since Casey has a cat at home, we are a pet-neutral company.)