{"id":123218,"date":"2019-04-02T16:25:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T16:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=123218"},"modified":"2020-02-24T06:37:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T06:37:02","slug":"using-google-dataset-search-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/04\/02\/using-google-dataset-search-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Dataset Search: How you can use it for SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in September 2018, Google launched its Dataset Search<\/a> tool, an engine which focuses on delivering results of hard data sources (research, reports, graphs, tables,\u00a0and others) in a more efficient manner than the one which is currently offered by Google<\/a> Search.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The service promises to enable easy access to the internet\u2019s treasure trove of data. As Google\u2019s Natasha Noy says,<\/a><\/p>\n

“Scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else can find the data required for their work and their stories, or simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For SEOs<\/a>, it certainly has potential as a new research tool for creating our own informative, trustworthy, and useful content<\/a>. But what of its prospects as a place to be visible, or as a ranking signal itself?<\/p>\n

Google Dataset Search: As a\u00a0research tool<\/h2>\n

As a writer who has been using Google<\/a> to search for data since about a decade, I\u2019d agree that finding hard statistics on search engines is not always massively straightforward.<\/p>\n

Often, data which isn\u2019t the most recent ranks better than newer research. This makes sense in an SEO<\/a> sense, that which was published months or years prior has had a\u00a0long time to earn authority and traffic. But usually I need the freshest stats, and even search results pointing to data on a page that has been published recently doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that the data contained in that page is from that date.<\/p>\n

Additionally, big publications (think news sites like the BBC) frequently rank better than the domain where the data was originally published. Again, this is unsurprising in the context of search engines. The BBC et al. have far more traffic, authority, inbound links, and changing content than most research websites, even .gov sites. But that doesn\u2019t mean to say that the user looking for hard data wants to see BBC\u2019s representation of that data.<\/p>\n

Another key issue we find when researching hard data on Google<\/a> concerns access to content. All too regularly, after a bit of browsing in the SERPs I find myself clicking through only to find that the report with the data I need is behind a paywall. How annoying.<\/p>\n

On the surface, Google<\/a> Dataset Search sets out to solve these issues.<\/p>\n

\"Example<\/p>\n

A quick search for “daily weather” (Google<\/a> seems keen to use this kind of .gov data to exemplify the usefulness of the tool) shows how the service differs from a typical search at Google<\/a>.com.<\/p>\n

Results rank down the left-hand side of the page with the rest of the SERP<\/a> real estate given over to more information about whichever result you have highlighted (position one is default). This description portion of the page includes:<\/p>\n