It seems like there’s an app for everything and everyone these days. Interested in meeting your soulmate by being matched with them based on the things you both hate? There’s an app for that. Want to earn gift cards and other prizes by simply walking around? There’s also an app for that. At the beginning of 2018, there were over 2 million apps available for your downloading pleasure in Apple’s App Store – and even more at your disposal if you’re an Android user, with just over 2.5 million options available in the Google Play Store.

• Most Popular Dating Apps By State
• What Are The Most Popular Dating Apps

24 Dating Sites With the Most Users. Badoo — 480M Users. The top app may surprise you. Badoo was one of the first dating apps on the scene, and it has amassed a large following around. Tinder — 300M Users. Plenty of Fish — 150M Users. Bumble — 100 M Users. Adult Friend Finder — 99M. This popular dating app was designed in 2002 to serve black and biracial singles around the world. Today, BlackPeopleMeet’s easy-to-use chat features and location-based searches allow millions of African American daters to flirt with one another while on the go. Browse Free: View Profiles Now.

With thousands of apps being added each and every day, there is a lot to learn about users and their preferences and in turn, endless ways to analyze and utilize the data. As a text marketing company, we’re always interested in learning more about people’s cell phone habits, including the types of apps people use most often. This prompted us to use Google Trends search data from the past 12 months to explore the most popular apps in the U.S. for a few different categories: health and fitness, dating, and fantasy football. In addition, we also looked at the most popular app overall in each state regardless of category.

Looking for Love? The Most Popular Dating Apps in Each State

We first looked at search data for some of the most popular dating apps. While the popularity of Match, Tinder, and eHarmony shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, there were quite a few states where the most searched dating app was one we were not as familiar with. Coffee Meets Bagel, for starters, a popular search for residents of both Hawaii and California, helps match users without the use of swiping. And there’s Hater, an app antithetical to your run of the mill online dating site, where users are matched based on the things they dislike rather than shared interests that proved to be the most searched dating app for Nebraskans.

The most unique dating app from this study is Huggle, top search from Florida, which matches users based on their shared places they frequent most. Another interesting take away from this data was the popularity of LGBTQ+-focused dating apps, which account for 16% of most searched dating apps used across the U.S. By learning which dating apps are being searched for most, we are able to get a bigger picture about the ways people choose to connect in the digital age.

Health and Fitness Buffs’ Most Searched Apps

We next looked at searches for the 25 most downloaded free health and fitness apps as of 10/8/18. Fitbit continues to dominate the health and fitness app scene and takes the top spot for most searched health and fitness app in 28% of states. Other fitness tracking top contenders include MyFitnessPal, Lose It, and Nike Run Club which account for another 26% of states.

One app you may not be familiar with, unless you live in Louisiana or Mississippi, is Sweatcoin, an app that pays you in virtual currency everytime you exercise. The currency can then be exchanged for sports watches and gift cards, which makes for a great added incentive when deciding whether or not to hit the gym. An interesting take away from this particular category is the rise in apps focused on guided meditation, which include the Calm and Headspace apps. By using these apps, people may be seeking out something more to take on the day or simply relax and unwind at the end of a long day.

Fantasy Football Fans’ Top Apps

Most Popular Dating Apps By State

It’s the time of year for fantasy football and these popular apps are likely being used more than ever as we approach the NFL playoffs. After analyzing search data for some of the most popular fantasy football apps, there were clear favorites in each region of the U.S. The East, West, and Midwest all seem to have their own unique go-to search when it comes to building their fantasy teams. In the east, FanDuel, NFL Fantasy Football in the West, and Yahoo Fantasy Sports takes the top spot in the Midwest. The next top search is DraftKings which pops up in the Northeast and Southwest.

In the heavily populated states of New York and California, Footballguys Fantasy Football seems to be interesting fans. The reason for such a clear divide among regions could be multifaceted. Regional teams and their fans may designate a specific app as their favorite or there could be an element of apps ensuring peak rewards to bring more fans on board. Either way, it’s certainly interesting to see how where you live can have an effect on the searches you make.

The Most Searched Apps Overall

And finally, we have made it to the overall most searched app across all categories. For this portion of the study, we looked at searches by state for the 50 most downloaded apps as of 10/8/18. Entertainment apps appear to be the clear winner in these results, but the type of entertainment varies between games, music, social media, and TV & movies. Games, which account for 30% of states’ overall searches, include the popular Fortnite, Happy Color, and Paper.io 2. Music apps comes in second, making up 14% of states’ top searches.

The top search in DC, Gmail, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise and the same goes for Uber in Nevada. Initially, it was interesting to us that social media apps make up only 4% of states’ most searched apps, but many of these apps often come preinstalled on phones and tablets when purchased new, which could be the reason for low numbers in this particular category.

While there are many takeaways from the data gathered in this study, it’s clear that entertainment is a primary motivation behind many app searches and where you live can have a big impact on your searches. We’ll be curious to see which apps launch in 2019 and how the new additions impact searches in each state.

Feb 9, 2017 Share
Brand Guides

Which Online Love Connection is Your State Falling for?

Love is in the air and it’s apparent online, where an increasing number of singles find their next date virtually. Cupid’s arrows hit the target in online dating apps, which have seen triple the users in recent years. At highspeedinternet.com, we wanted to speculate about which platforms get used most often to find partners in each state, and if any patterns emerged in our collective search for the perfect match. What did our quest for dating data uncover? Niche apps that focus on demographic factors like religion, gender, or lifestyle are on the rise and trending heavily in certain parts of the country. We expected to see wide areas of Tinder country, where swiping right is part of the single life. And it’s true that Tinder peppers our map from sea to shining sea. But the unexpected winner of our virtual lonely hearts club? Christian Mingle, a faith-based dating site, dominates the Bible Belt. Unfortunately, experts have long observed that higher divorce rates also reign across the same sections of country, so perhaps Christians are mingling a little too much. Ahem. To identify the most popular dating app, we utilized Google Trends data and isolated apps and sites that had statistically significant popularity in each state.

STATE	DATING APP	DESCRIPTION
Alabama	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Alaska	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Arizona	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Arkansas	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
California	Coffee Meets Bagel	Ladies choice dating
Colorado	eHarmony	Traditional Profile Match Site
Connecticut	Match.com	Dating community
Delaware	eHarmony	Traditional Profile Match Site
DC	Hinge	FB friends Dating App
Florida	Senior People Meet	Senior-focused dating
Georgia	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Hawaii	Grindr	Gay dating app
Idaho	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
Illinois	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Indiana	Grindr	Gay dating app
Iowa	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
Kansas	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Kentucky	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Louisiana	Cougar Life	Older women focused dating
Maine	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Maryland	eHarmony	Traditional Profile Match Site
Massachusetts	Senior People Meet	Senior-focused dating
Michigan	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Minnesota	eHarmony	Traditional Profile Match Site
Mississippi	Lulu	Women centric dating
Missouri	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Montana	Plenty of Fish	Traditional Profile Match Site
Nebraska	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
Nevada	Grindr	Gay dating app
New Hampshire	Match.com	Dating community
New Jersey	Bumble	Women first dating
New Mexico	Grindr	Gay dating app
New York	Happn	Location based dating
North Carolina	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
North Dakota	Match.com	Dating community
Ohio	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
Oklahoma	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
Oregon	Down	Casual dating
Pennsylvania	Down	Casual dating
Rhode Island	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
South Carolina	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
South Dakota	Match.com	Dating community
Tennessee	Christian Mingle	Faith-Based Profile Matching
Texas	Down	Casual dating
Utah	LDS Singles	Dating for Mormons
Vermont	OKCupid	Traditional Profile Match Site
Virginia	Down	Casual dating
Washington	Tinder	Gamified Dating App
West Virginia	Farmer’s Only	Rural focused dating
Wisconsin	Match.com	Dating community
Wyoming	Zoosk	International Dating App

Let’s do a deep dive into the data, shall we? We’ll determine exactly what the state of dating is in the United States and which apps have a little something more to say about the state that loves them.

Regional Romance

What Are The Most Popular Dating Apps

What’s trending across particular parts of the country? Take a look at what each region is head over heels for.

• The South is way into Christian Mingle, choosing to keep the faith in online romance.
• Western parts of the United States are down with more casual hook-ups like Grindr, Down, and Tinder.
• The Northeast kicks it old-school with traditional profile sites like eHarmony, com, OK Cupid.
• Midwest states keep it in the country by dating with Farmer’s Only.

Church Connections

The more heavily religious an area is, the more likely the favored darting app is to be affiliated with religion.

• All across the Bible Belt, Christians can’t resist getting together with Christian Mingle.
• Mormon couples opt to find the perfect connection in Utah with LDS Singles.

As you go west, however, and the non-religious population grows, religiously-affiliated dating gets jilted. You won’t find a single state that prefers to mingle the Christian way beyond the Rockies.

It’s all About the Ladies

Lots of recent, trendy dating apps focus on women for a reason. Most of them are popular in states with some serious girl power going on.

• As one of the states with the top 5 best paid leave and wage equality ratings in the U.S., New Jersey knows that ladies’ choice Bumble is the only way to find a sweetie.
• Mississippi women, who have the highest percentage of registered women voters in the country, know what they want and they aren’t afraid to ask LuLu for it.
• Louisiana ladies are living the Cougar Life with the second highest percentage of registered women voters.
• With some of the friendliest paid leave policies and a smaller than average wage gap, it’s no surprise that California is hungry for Coffee Meets Bagel.

A Few Other Favorite Findings

• Wyoming cruises the dating scene with Zoosk, an international dating app. While Wyoming still has a fairly low immigrant population, it’s seen one of the largest rates of immigration growth in the US, up 33% from 2000–2011.
• D.C. is all about who you know (nudge, nudge. wink, wink), so it’s no surprise their favorite app, Hinge, makes connections between Facebook friends.
• Montana is a renowned fishing locale, and their obsession with Plenty of Fish is no secret.
• With one of the top 5 oldest median ages in the United States, Florida’s residents definitely need Senior People Meet. But the oldest median age in the U.S. by far? Maine, who is still setting romance on fire with Tinder. Keep on with your bad self, Mainers. Age is just a number.

Does your state’s dating app obsession seem like the perfect match? Share our map and discuss. But no fighting, kids. Only love. Sweet, sweet love.

Author - HSI Staff

Kaz is a writer, blogger and social media junkie. She uses her tenacity to investigate the best of the Internets.