Unified Search: The single search bar allows you to type or speak phrases and supports searches by:

• Topic
• Geography (nation, state, county, place, county subdivision, congressional district, school district, ZIP Code, ZIP Code Tabulation Area, American Indian area, Alaska Native area, Hawaiian home land)
• Table name
• Table ID (single or multiple table IDs)
• North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code
• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) occupation code
• Detailed population groups by race, ethnicity, ancestry, and county of birth

Other features of single search include:

• Entity extraction: Allows you to search multiple filters at once (example: a search for ‘poverty Maryland Virginia’ sets filters for ‘poverty,’ ‘Maryland,’ and ‘Virginia.’)
• Typeahead search suggestions: As you type into the single search bar, a box will appear with search suggestions that update in real time­
• Spelling corrections, related search suggestions, and relevancy rules are applied to the free form text you enter in the search bar
• Search by Address: Allows you to type an address into a pop-up window to get a list of clickable geography filters the address falls within. This feature is accessible by clicking the geography pin icon in the single search bar on the landing page. The address search is powered by and limited to addresses recognized by the Census Geocoder. The search results provide a list of geography filters the address falls within, including the state, combined statistical area, county subdivision, urban area, place, county, state legislative district (upper and lower chambers), block, census tract, congressional district, and ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA).

Filters: Use filters as guided approach to browse all available options and precisely select them without having to come up with your own words for a search. Filters allow you to access all available search options, including more detailed options that are not supported through the single search bar.

Browse filters to find check boxes that allow you to select your desired:

• Code (industry, commodity, material/fuel, product and service, or occupation codes)
• Geography
• Survey
• Topic
• Year

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), North American Product Classification System (NAPCS), and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Occupation Codes are included in the code filters. The site supports options to select collections of codes in bulk.

The topics filters allow you to select detailed race, ethnicity, ancestry, and country of birth population groups. These filters include check boxes that allow you to select collections of population groups in a single click (example: “All available tribes” or “All available ancestries”).

“Search for a Filter” Search Box: The search box directly at the top of the filter panel allows you to select pre-defined search options to quickly choose your topic, geography, year, survey, or code without clicking through the filter panel. You must input an exact text match in order to find a filter and you must click the check box for the desired filter in order to select it.

Search within Filter Panels: Each filter panel has a search bar at the top of the panel that allows you to search the list of results for that single filter panel without having to scroll through the list. You must input an exact text match in order to find a result.

“Search Geography”: The search bar at the top of the main geography filter panel is a global geography filter search box. When you use this search, the site will provide a list of all types of geography filters that match your text.

Summary Levels: The geography filters provide comprehensive access to nearly 250 geographic summary levels, listed in Appendix 1.

Dual Pathways to Select Your Geography: The filters offer two methods to select your geography

1. Geographic Entities: By default, the site provides nine boxes with the most popular types of geographic areas, followed a collapsed list of all other geographic levels. This pathway helps  you easily get to the most popular geographies by hiding some of the more complex geographies from the default views. You can still access these complex geographies if you need them by clicking the plus sign to expand “Within other geographies” or by clicking the “Show Geographic Components” tab.
2. Summary Levels: The site allows you to click the “Show Summary Levels” tab to see a list of all geographic areas sorted by their 3-digit summary level codes.

Simplified Process to Select Geographies with Variants: Many geography lists are simplified to only show one label for each geography. When you select the label, it will provide data over time for all available vintages of that geography, even if the geography name has changed slightly over time. This provides shorter lists to scroll through and does not require you to know the history of label changes to get to the data you need.

These simplified lists are applied to all geographies with variants, including metropolitan/micropolitan statistical areas, congressional districts, state legislative districts, and urban areas.

Collections of Geographies: The site allows you to select collections of geographies in bulk by clicking a single check box. See Appendix 2 for a list of available collections. 

Single Search Bar Displayed on All Pages: The single search bar appears at the top of all pages on data.census.gov, allowing you to refine your search without having to return to the landing page. When you edit the text in the single search bar, any filters you already selected by clicking a check box are automatically remembered so you won’t lose them in your search.

Filters Accessible on All Pages: The site provides a panel dedicated to selecting filters and viewing your selections. This panel is accessible across all pages on data.census.gov so you can review and refine your search criteria at any time without having to leave your current view or navigate between different parts of the site. The landing page also features a link to the “Advanced Search” that will take you directly to the filter options if you would like to begin your search by selecting filters.

Flexible Screen Layout: Most pages on data.census.gov provide flexibility to determine the layout through expandable and collapsible side panels:

• Expand the Filters panel when you want to view or edit your search criteria
• Expand the Results panel when you want to browse table results or select a new table
• Collapse the Filters/Results panels when you want to see more of the table, map, or chart across your screen

Navigation Options for “All,” “Tables,” “Maps,” “Charts,” “Profiles,” and “Pages”: The site features six tabs at the top that allow you to navigate between different types of search results: All, Tables, Maps, Charts, Profiles, or Pages.

Clear a Search: Clicking the U.S. Census Bureau logo in the upper left allows you to clear all selections and navigates you back to the landing page so you can start a fresh search.

Edit a Search: The filter panel and single search bar show the search criteria that power your search.

• Filters with a lock icon tell you the search criteria is powered by the text you entered in the single search bar. You can remove these filters by editing the text in the single search bar.
• Filters with an “x” tell you the search criteria is based on a filter check box you selected. You can click the “x” to individually remove the filter.

All View of Search Results Content: After running a search, the All Results page will show you the top tables, maps, and web pages in one view. This is powered by consolidated curated results, meaning you may see prescribed search results and single estimates for selected topics based on geography and year.

Browse Long Lists of Results: The site provides the first 10 results by default, and includes functionality to page through the remaining results from your search. You may increase the number of results provided on each page to 25 or 50, allowing you to browse a long list of results in fewer clicks.

Option to Browse List of Table Results Across Full Screen: The site often shows a table or map as you are browsing through the list of results. If you would prefer to browse a long list of table titles across your full screen before viewing a table, click the “View All Tables” button on the All Results page.

Table View: All table views have features that allow you to:

• Download and export the table in Excel, CSV, and ZIP file formats
• Print the table
• Share the table via social media, email, or by copying the link to your clipboard
• Cite the table using MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, BibTex, and RIS formats
• Add or remove geographies, years, codes, or population groups using filters
• Hide or show columns
• View API data and metadata queries for the table you are viewing
• Access, search, and print data notes and links to technical documentation
• Resize columns by moving the edge of the cell right/left in the column header
• Rearrange columns by dragging them
• Restore the table layout at the click of a button

Table Features Specific to Some Surveys/Programs: Some tables have more features that allow you to:

• Turn off the margin of error with a click of a button. By default, the margin of error will be displayed for relevant tables.
• Freeze columns in place so they remain in view as you scroll horizontally
• Sort a column in ascending or descending order by clicking the column header
• View definitions for column headers and data values in selected surveys by hovering over them
• Transpose the rows and columns in a table with the click of a button
• Pivot tables so you can customize the layout of flat data tables (available for tables from economic surveys/programs and the Population Estimates Program)
• Create a custom filter to keep only the data rows in the table that meet your specified criteria
• Access links to bulk data downloads (e.g. file transfer protocol sites)
• View pre-filtered versions of large tables (e.g. County Business Patterns) to more easily explore the most popular information the table provides
• View iterated tables by race, Hispanic origin, ancestry, and country of birth

The site offers the following ways to output the table:

Large Table Download: Tables with more than 1,000 columns, 2.5 million cells, or tables that have an uncompressed download size of at least 4mb are considered large tables. These tables may be too large to display on screen. When you access a large table, the site will prompt you to download the table, which is the recommended action. It will also provide a link that gives you the option to try to load the large table on screen anyway, at the risk of experiencing long load times or browser instability.

Save Your Results: Copy the full URL from your address bar to save the table or map view. When you visit the URL later, it will take you back to the table view, as well as the list of other results based on your search criteria.

Save Your Search: Copy the URL from your address bar. Delete the parts of the URL related to your view. This will make sure the search runs fresh each time the URL loads and does not save any particular table or map view.

Learn about the different components of the URL and more functionality in the FAQ: How Do I Save My Results or Search.

Base Map: Choose from three settings for the primary base map that you see at all times as you use the selection and thematic maps:

• Basic: Provides streets, street names, and railroads based on your zoom level
• Detailed: Provides all the features of the basic map, as well as color-coded features for airports, hospitals, parks, and military installations
• None: View a map with none of the above features

Selection Map: In addition to the single search and geography filters, the map offers two additional ways to select your geographies:

• Click and select individual geographies
• Use rectangle, circle, and lasso selection tools to select a group of geographies in bulk

These selections carry over as you navigate between the maps and tables across the site. Over 100 geographic summary levels are supported. See the list of supported Map Layers  for details on the available summary levels by year.

Thematic Map: Allows you to map an estimate from a data table across a single geographic layer. All thematic map views have features that allow you to:

• Choose the geographic layer, product type, data variable, and non-key dimensions
• Choose between numbers and percentages, when percentages are shown in the corresponding table display
• Search within the data variable drop down menu without having to scroll through the entire list
• Zoom in and out. Geography labels, boundaries, and other map features automatically populate based on the zoom level.
• Clear your selected geographies
• Adjust the color palette and transparency
• Increase or decrease the number of data classes in your legend
• Change the legend’s classification type (Natural Breaks, Quantile, Equal Interval, or Manual Breaks)
• Show boundaries and labels for multiple types of geographies at the same time
• Click on the map to identify the geographic areas a point falls within
• View a histogram that shows the range and frequency of data values on your map
• View the mean, standard deviation, skew, and kurtosis for the data values on your map
• Generate a table view of your selected variable and geography labels
• Download map boundaries in GeoJSON format
• Print the map from a PDF
• Share the map via social media, email, or by copying the link to your clipboard
• Move or collapse the map legend

You can access a profile that includes statistics and visualizations across topics, surveys, and programs for your geography in a single view. The profiles are fully accessible for these types of geographic areas: nation, states, counties, places, county subdivisions, congressional districts, school districts, ZIP codes/ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), American Indian areas, Alaska Native areas, and Hawaiian home lands.

You may also manually edit the GEOID in the geography portion of the URL to navigate to a partial profile for any geographic type not specifically mentioned above. For these partial profiles, you will see featured statistics for the geography. Special bar charts and thematic maps are not currently available for these areas in the partial profile views.

Share/Embed Visualizations: The profiles feature enhanced options that allow you to access a link to share a visualization or embed it in your own html website. A variety of share buttons allow you to share the links via email, social media, or by copying the link to your clipboard.

Industry Profiles allow you to explore key data, visualizations, and maps for any 2–6-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code. These profiles are available at the state or national level.

To access and Industry Profile, simply run a search for a single NAICS code and up to one geography (nation or state), and then click the blue box on the All results page that says “Explore Data.”

Pop Story App: Accessible at data.census.gov/app/population_pyramids

The Pop Story App showcases the use of population pyramids to tell data stories and features an interactive widget at the end. This widget allows you to browse population pyramids for the nation, states, counties, cities/towns, ZIP code tabulation areas, congressional districts, school districts, American Indian areas, Alaska Native areas, and Hawaiian Homelands. You can also share population pyramids by email or social media.

Modern Design Refresh: In Summer 2022, the site was updated to a new look and feel with modern design elements.

Navigation/Filtering Updates: In Winter 2021, significant improvements to navigation and filtering were applied to improve the user experience.

Refreshed Look and Feel: In Spring 2019, a major refresh was applied to the look and feel to improve the user experience and navigation throughout the site. Since then, we continue to make periodic tweaks based on user feedback, such as a refreshed landing page and better table display that requires less scrolling.

Use the Site on Mobile Devices: Responsive design allows you to experience the site in a way that has been optimized for your smartphone or tablet, in either portrait or landscape orientation

Architecture Enhancements: Includes ongoing research activities to identify mapping and table solutions to enable future features.

Accessibility Features: Accessibility control panel you can open by clicking the person icon in the lower left corner of the site. This panel allows you customize a variety of display settings including content scaling, dark mode, light contrast, dark contrast, low brightness, low saturation, high saturation, monochrome, hue shift, large cursor, and invert color. It also provides access to useful links and an option to reset back to the default settings.

The microdata access tool on data.census.gov/app/mdat allows you to create custom tables using public use microdata from the American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, Survey of Income and Program Participation, and a few economic datasets. The tool allows you to:

• Select variables and restrict the values you include in your analysis
• Recode variables to create custom groupings
• Select geographies from various summary levels depending on the survey (region, division, state, county, and public use microdata area)
• Format a custom table by dragging variables to the rows and columns
• Restrict your table universe
• Download or use API queries to output the table view or raw data
• In December 2024, the Microdata Access Tool was refreshed with an updated look and feel.

Limitations

Please be aware of the following limitations of Microdata Access:

• The site does not currently have the functionality to:
  • Calculate medians, percentages, or margins of error
  • Show data over time in a single table view
  • Calculate an average over time for monthly CPS datasets
  • Produce tables that are larger than 400 columns by 2000 rows
  • Apply inflation-adjustment variables like ADJINC to dollar values in ACS datasets
• Place of work PUMAs (POWPUMAs), migration PUMAs (MIGPUMAs), and dual-vintage PUMAs are extremely difficult to use in Microdata Access because they are not available as selectable geographies. ACS datasets with dual-vintage PUMAs include the 2022, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012 ACS 5-Year PUMS.
• A current defect prevents you from downloading raw microdata when 5 or more geographies are selected in some datasets. As we work to resolve this issue, you can access these data using the API queries in the download screen.

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions to learn about using data.census.gov, the Census API, and the Microdata Access. Find out what data, features, and functionality is available.