On January 23, Google announced that it brought Google Dataset Search out of beta and is now completely live. Google has also added new features to the speciality search engine.
With Google Dataset Search, searchers can find datasets that are stored across the web through keyword searches. “The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful,” Google explains.
The service first came out in beta in 2018 and allowed users to find data from sciences, government, some news organizations.
New features were added to Google Dataset Search once the rollout was complete. Here are the new features:
- You can filter the results based on the types of dataset that you want; such as tables, images, text or more.
- You can also filter the results based on whether the dataset is available for free from the provider.
- Google will show you a map if the dataset is about a geographic area.
- Google Mobile-friendly support was added
- Google said it has “significantly improved the quality of dataset descriptions.”
According to Google, Dataset Search has indexed about 25 million of these datasets. It’s built mainly through datasets schema, which allows “anybody who publishes data can make their datasets discoverable in Dataset Search,” Google said.
For webmasters, Google gives you tools found within Google Search Console that lets you see your datasets in the enhancements report section. This report shows errors an warnings if applicable, as well as how many URLs have valid datasets markup on it.