Most popular UK dating shows

Love Island is without a doubt the most popular dating show on Google, with over 8.3 million searches in July 2019 for its fifth series.

That equates to one in every eight people in the United Kingdom.

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With TV dating shows all the rage, a new study examines which are the most popular in the UK at the time of airing, examining 16 programmes and how frequently we search for them on Google.

Unsurprisingly, Love Island outperformed the competition by a wide margin, with 8.3 million searches for the fifth series at its peak in 2019.

That’s the same series that included the turmoil involving Amber Gill and Michael Griffiths, as well as Tommy Fury and his growing romance. Molly-Mae Hague average monthly search volume is 700K.

Channel 4’s Naked Attraction is the second most popular, with over 800K in searches at its peak during the first series in August 2016. Currently, its average monthly search volume is around 110K. The show’s latest series aired in 2021, and there has even been talk of a spin-off set in a hotel.

Taking third place is the UK’s Married at First Sight with just under 500K during its sixth series in September 2021, and a current average monthly search volume of around 130K, 18% higher than Naked Attraction.

Netflix’s Love Is Blind takes the fourth spot, and the most searched for dating show on a streaming platform, with just under 450K peak searches during its first series in March 2020. In fifth place is also Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle with a peak of around 300K searches during its first series in April 2020.

But can Love Island keep hold of its title amidst the launch of multiple new dating shows?

In the last couple of months alone, we’ve had the new dating show – The Language of Love – premiere on Channel 4, where Davina McCall sees a group of love-seekers live in a house in Spain. The catch being that half of them are British and the other half are Spanish with neither group speaking the other’s language. In early January, we welcomed the second series of The Cabins on ITV2, and Netflix has also brought out the third series of Too Hot to Handle in January, and a second series of its other dating hit Love Is Blind. There are even Japanese and Brazilian versions. So if there’s one thing we love here in the UK, it’s watching other people fall in love.

You can view the full set of dating show Google searches below:

Most popular dating shows in the UK, by search volume

UK dating show	Series	Aired (month, year)	UK monthly search volume at the time
Love Island	5	Jul 19	8,320,432
Naked Attraction	1	Aug 16	808,960
Married at First Sight UK version	6	Sep 21	498,144
Love Is Blind	1	Mar 20	446,786
Too Hot to Handle	1	Apr 20	307,995
The Cabins	1	Jan 21	199,660
Take Me Out	8	Jan 16	167,575
The Circle	2	Oct 19	160,019
The Bachelorette	12	Jul 16	112,082
Five Guys a Week	1	Mar 20	44,062
First Dates	4	Oct 15	43,860
Dating Around	2	Jun 20	32,978
Blind Date	1	Jun 17	23,317
Dinner Date	6	Oct 16	11,771
The Bachelor	6	Mar 19	7,764
Hot Property	1	Jun 19	6,053