Google announced today it has graduated Google Dataset Search from a beta product and is now fully live. With that, Google also added new features to the speciality search engine.
What is Google Dataset search. Google Dataset Search enables searchers to find datasets 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 launched as a beta in 2018 as a way to find data from sciences, government, some news organizations.
New features. Google added new features to Google Dataset Search with this rollout. Those new features include:
- 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.”
The index. Google said Dataset Search has indexed almost 25 million of these datasets. It is built mostly through datasets schema, which allows “anybody who publishes data can make their datasets discoverable in Dataset Search,” Google said.
Webmasters. Google even gives you tools within Google Search Console to see your datasets in the enhancements report section. The new report shows errors and warnings if applicable and also how many URLs have valid datasets markup on it.
Why we care. If you have a data driven web site and want to make your data more widely accessible, using datasets schema can help. And now the Dataset Search is out of beta, you can expect more searches and usage from it. So maybe, just maybe, you will see more traffic to your site from Google Dataset Search – so make sure to test out adding the schema to your site.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.