Google latest Beta launch is designed to make it easier for users to search for and find datasets found across the web.  Called ‘Dataset Search’ the new service will help make it easier for data scientists, journalists, and any other users find datasets housed on any websites.  The search function relies on structured data embedded in web sites to provide a confederated search point for the millions of web pages that host datasets.  Google has adopted the open source standard (schema.org) for embedding metadata within the coding of each web page that offers data. This structured data includes such information as who created the data, when it was created, terms of use, etc.
This latest launch is part of Google’s effort to increase discoverability of datasets for data journalists. Â Earlier this summer Google had launched the highlighting of tabular data in Google searches.
‘Dataset Search’ will help consolidate search efforts onto one platform instead of having to individually search for data on various portals. Â This should help facilitate discoverability of some GIS datasets that might otherwise be hard to find via a traditional search engine query.
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- Making it easier to discover datasets, The Keyword, Google
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