What’s more popular, spring or summer? Cats or dogs? In the past few months since we introduced the Keyword Trends Tool, we’ve had a lot of fun comparing words Shutterstock customers search for. We also identified some interesting seasonal trends that can help you figure out the best time to upload images to Shutterstock.

Here are 5 of our favorite charts, made with words suggested by members of the Shutterstock contributor team, and what we learned from each one.

1. Dogs beat cats.

You hear people talk about how popular cat pictures are on the Internet. But doggone it, Shutterstock customers are decidedly canine people, performing more searches for “dog” than “cat” week after week. Arf!

2. Customers plan further ahead for winter than other seasons.

Seasonal searches peak the week the season starts—with one exception: Winter. Searches for “winter” peak the last week of November—three weeks early. So upload your winter images in November to optimize the exposure they get. Other seasons follow a predictable pattern, peaking the week the season starts. Searches for “spring” peak the third week of March. Summer peaks the third week of June. Autumn peaks the third week of September.

3. Customers want happy images—especially in December.

Emotions are popular search words. Compare a few such words and you’ll see “happy” and “funny” handily beat gloomier words like “sad,” “angry,” and “serious.” This makes sense, right? There’s always a demand for images of people expressing all sorts of emotions, but happiness is probably the emotion that people most want attached to their products. What struck us, though, is that searches for “happy” and “funny” peak near the end of December. For whatever reason, people are looking for good-mood images that time of year.

4. More people search for “iPhone” than “phone.”

Here’s a striking example of the popularity of Apple products in our community. In the fourth quarter of 2011, “iPhone” passed “Phone” in popularity as a Shutterstock search term. On top of that, even more people are searching for “iPad.” The word “tablet” saw steady growth in 2011, probably due to people searching for images of tablet computers. The word “Smartphone” remains popular (and more popular than “smart phone”) but isn’t growing as fast.

As an important note, Apple and other manufactures keep strict control over their product designs, so we only distribute images of these products for editorial use—in other words, news photos. However, images of generic-looking phones and tablet computers are permissible for non-editorial use.

5. Start creating images of snakes NOW.

In late 2011, we saw a surge in the number of searches for “dragon.” That’s because January 23, 2012, marked the start of the Year of the Dragon on the Chinese Zodiac. You can bet a similar spike will happen in late 2012 when people begin searching for images to illustrate the Year of the Snake, which begins February 10, 2013. Want to be ready for the influx of customers seeking pictures of snakes? Produce images of snakes now, and be ready to upload them later in the year.

We hope you find this kind of information as interesting as we do! What are some of the favorite searches you’ve done with the Keyword Trends Tool? Let us know in the comments.