WASHINGTON — With Thanksgiving just hours away, it's safe to assume your cooking plans are already in motion. You can almost smell Thanksgiving dinner now. But what is Thanksgiving dinner without dessert?
If you asked three different people what their favorite Thanksgiving dessert was, you may get three different answers. So we went to Google to see what delicious treats people were salivating about leading up to the holiday.
Out of the four pies we looked at, two floated to the top for Google searches in the last two weeks leading into Thanksgiving. And one of them may surprise you – because it's technically not a pie. Though it's clearly popular.
Before you ask, yes, in addition to this list, we looked at banana cream pie, cherry pie, and chocolate cream pie. While people obviously Googled these, they didn't come close to our top four.
The honorable mentions in this contest go to apple pie and pecan pie. Both had strong showings but didn't get enough Google searches to make the top two.
Our runner-up was pecan pie.
Pecan pie had some strong showings in the so-called "Bible Belt."
The decadent treat garnered 28% of Google searches in Alabama and Mississippi, 27% in Louisiana, and 20% in Arkansas and Georgia. It also had 20% of the searches in the District of Columbia.
In third place was apple pie.
Its highest showing was in Wyoming with 42%. However, interestingly, that wasn't enough Google searches to win the state. Apparently, in the Equality State, pecan pie had 0% of the search traffic. That left the door open for pumpkin pie to sweep the competition with 48%.
Apple pie did come out on top in one of the 50 states with just 30% of searches, Alaska.
Alaskans love their apple pie, according to Google Trends. The 30% of search traffic was enough to beat out two other pies that both had 28%.
That brings us to the top two "pies." One choice is obvious, but the other may surprise you.
Pumpkin pie comes in second place as being the most searched pie in 18 states. California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Montana ... these are just some of the states that searched for pumpkin pie more than any other in the last two weeks.
Now, I know what you're thinking: How could pumpkin pie come in second place for Thanksgiving? I was surprised too, but the dessert at the top isn't one you may think of when you think of Thanksgiving.
It's finally something that Texas, Florida and New York can all agree on. They all love cheesecake.
Cheesecake, while not technically a pie because it does not have a pastry topping, feels like more of a pie than it does a cake. And it swept Google searches in a majority of states.
In the last two weeks, cheesecake was the dominant search in 31 states.
The cheesecake was most popularly searched in Delaware, with 45% of Google traffic in the Diamond State. But it had great showings in Indiana, South Carolina and Nevada with 41% of search traffic. And Tennessee and New Jersey with 40%.
That's the list. We don't have to like it, we just have to accept it and move on.
>Here's the map of pie Google searches by state if you wish to exam the data for yourself:
Editor's Note: The data used in this story is from the last two weeks of Google Trends. Google is still finalizing its data from the time period, so percentages and dominance may fluctuate.
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