Computing & Software Systems (CSS): Google Search Tools

Google Dataset Search 

Important points to keep in mind about Google Dataset Search:

• Results from Google partnerships often float to the top of any results list. For example, Google has a paid partnership with the data aggregator Statista, therefore Statista is commonly seen in search results. Remember to dig deep, past the data that surfaces to the top, if you need data that is more relevant to your topic.
• Experimenting with various keywords and phrases will help diversify search results.  
• Data is expensive. Sites like Statista will make users pay to access. While other resources will allow free access. Don't ever pay for data! Ask your librarian for help accessing the dataset or finding a comparable dataset.
• The data provider is usually not the author. When citing data always find the author of the data and cite that person or organization. 

Data portals accessible on the web:

• DataHub - Thousands of datasets from financial markets and population growth to cryptocurrency prices. Data collections include climate change, health care, education, linked open data, machine learning, reference data, world bank, and much more. 
• DataWorld - requires paid subscription - 30 day free trial available. 
• Kaggle - owned by Google. A workspace for data scientists and the data research community. 
• Statista - a subscription based data portal. Oftentimes datasets in Statista (or comparable datasets) can be found elsewhere for free. Ask your librarian for help. 

When searching for data sets in the general Google search, add the term "dataset" or "data set" to your search term phrase.

Use Google Advanced Search to execute refined searches. 

Quirky Boolean features:

• Google does not use Boolean AND, so there is no need to enter the AND command.
• Google uses a minus sign to eliminate a term from a search.
  Example: -cryptocurrency (eliminates the term cryptocurrency from the search results)

To search for an exact phrase use quotes. Example: "Internet of Things" security

Use Google Scholar to search for scholarly literature that is indexed by Google. 

Help for accessing articles from off-campus through Google Scholar.

Keep in mind:

• Not ALL scholarly literature is searchable in Google Scholar.
• Scholarly literature is only a fraction of what shows up in a Google Scholar results list. A large percentage of the material in Google Scholar search results includes: book chapters, white papers, grey papers, blog posts and other web pages that are deemed scholarly but are not, and patents. 
• The primary options for refining searches in Google Scholar are by date and relevance.  
• If you can not find an article in Google Scholar, ask a librarian to help you locate the article in the UW Libraries databases.