Discovering Millions of Free Datasets

The Internet is full of unstructured data, and some consumers call it crap. However, the Internet is also full of structured, useful, and credible data that individuals and businesses can use. I provide a step-by-step guide to accessing free datasets using Google service. There are millions of them.

Photo by Michele Seghieri on Unsplash

For many of us, using data on the Internet resembles the metaphor of drinking from a fire hydrant. Fortunately, we have excellent services to help the consumers drink from this metaphorical data hose.

In this post, I want to introduce Google Datasets demonstrating a sample search on the web.

I helped many researchers and content developers to access quantitative data. This data type is structured and can easily be used leveraging tools like Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, Apple Numbers, or Google Sheets.

I use the free datasets in my data science projects, conducting research, and content development initiatives.

Internet, particularly the World Wide Web (WWW), can offer millions of datasets, easily accessible, in many topics and disciplines.

In this article, I want to introduce the publicly available Google Datasets.

For several years, the Google Datasets service was in beta. It was promising. I knew it would hit the market and contribute to researchers. Google commissioned the service in production last year.

I tried it for several research topics in my field and was amazed at the richness of data sources spread across over 25 million datasets, which can be accessed from a single search link.

Google Datasets is a powerful service giving access to rich datasets, data sources, leading access to actual data for use.

The other day, I was writing an article about Carnivore Diet. I usually use PubMed for qualitative data but wanted to check whether I can find some quantitative data sets. When I search the term “Carnivore Diet”, I came across only one dataset.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

I came across 100 datasets about Carnivore Diet. Let me show you how to access free datasets via the Google Datasets. You can enter the URL for the Google Datasets to your web browser.

The URL is: https://datasetsearch.research.google.com

When you enter this link to your browser, you can see the following screen prompting you to perform dataset search.

Image screen capture by author

You can enter your search term. For example, I typed the Carnivore Diet in the search box. When I click on the Free button, the search produced 100 datasets.

Image screen capture by author

You can select listed datasets from the left window of your screen.

Each dataset provides useful information such as data sources, related articles, a unique identifier from doi.org, providers of the dataset, authors, license type, time period, location of data, and a description as an abstract.

When using data for research or publishing purposes, the license type becomes vital. I always ensure that the copyright ownership states "CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication".

Another important consideration is the format of data in the dataset.

On the top bar of your window, you can see a download information button. When you click on it you will have the options listed in the following figure.

Image screen capture by author

Based on your requirements, you can select a table, document, image, or text.

If you want to see datasets with all formats, you need to click on all options.

However, if you want to access, let's say only a table format, then you can select the table option and leave the other options blank. This selection will filter dataset with a table format in the sets you are searching.

When you find a dataset, you will see a button called explore [name of the datasource]. For example in my selected dataset, I choose datadryadd.org.

Image screen capture by author

When I click on this button, it takes me to the page with the details of the dataset. The following figure shows where to download the dataset.

Image screen capture by author

Now, all you need to do is to click on the Download dataset button. It is up to you what you want to do with this data. You can also download articles related to this specific dataset.

In addition, the site provides metrics such as the number of views, downloads, and citations. This metric gives an idea about the quality and popularity of data.

I hope you find some useful datasets for your research using this free Google service.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

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