Data.census.gov Newsletter – June 2022

Help Us Build a Better Data.census.gov. Take Our Survey!

All improvements made to data.census.gov are driven by your feedback. We know that reliable access to Census Bureau data is paramount. In the spirit of improving customer experience, we are asking all our data users to take a 15-minute survey, to privately share what works, what doesn’t, and what features they would like to see improved on data.census.gov.

No matter what your expertise level, we want to ensure our data tool works for all our users’ needs. Even if you already took our survey last year, we encourage you to complete it again this year.

Complete the Survey

Latest System Updates

In May, we released new updates to improve your experience on data.census.gov. With this release, you will now see:

• Improved label of map button
• Enhanced typeahead search results
• Improved banner placement
• Technical updates to improve performance and automated testing
• Fixes to 16 defects

Learn More

The focus of the release is to help make your experience on the site more intuitive and consistent across the site. In the single search bar, you will notice that typeahead search suggestions for popular phrases like “state,” “county,” or “city” provide results that are ordered by population size. Banners appear at the top of the screen across all pages to keep key messages all in one place. And finally, we updated the label of the previous “Style” map button to now say “Boundaries.” We applied this update to better describe its functionality, which allows you to show boundaries for more types of geographic areas on your map.

We also implemented behind-the-scenes technical updates. This includes updates to improve our automated testing on data.census.gov, as well as the speed that featured statistics are populated on your screen as you use the site.

Coming Soon

In future updates to data.census.gov, we are working toward:

• Search within filter panels
• Refreshed landing page
• Improved Geography Profiles
• Enhanced search
• Defect fixes

Featured Question

How do I select geography components such as urban/rural?

After selecting your primary geography in the advanced search filters, click the “Show Geographic Components” tab. This will provide the full list of the available geographic components, such as urban or rural.

Learn More

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Upcoming Webinar:

Data.census.gov News and Updates: June 2022

6/28: 2:00-3:00pm ET

In this updates webinar we will cover updates on data.census.gov for the months of April, May, and June. Updates include several search improvements, added geographies for Geography Profiles, fixes to defects, and more.

Details

Upcoming Workshops:

Choose one of many workshop dates.

Basics of Finding Data on data.census.gov

These participatory classes walk you through examples that cover the basics of using data.census.gov to find demographic and economic data, including ways to search, options available for getting tables into Excel, how to map a table, and more.

Register

Advanced Usage of data.census.gov

For experienced users of data.census.gov, or those who have completed the “Basics of Finding Data Using data.census.gov” workshop, this participatory class walks you through some of the more advanced ways to use data.census.gov to find demographic and economic data, including detailed race, ethnicity, and ancestry data, finding data for collections of geographies, using geographic components, and more.

Register

Recorded Webinar:

Mastering Complex Geographies on data.census.gov

In this training, we show you how to select geographic components like urban and rural, find which geographies are compatible with a dataset, and how to use the mapping feature on data.census.gov. You will also learn tips and tricks that will help with the selection of complex geographies like census tracts and block groups, vintage-based geographies, and geographies that fall  within other geographies.  

Coming Soon

June Events

We will promote data.census.gov to attendees at these events in June:

• Census Transportation Planning Products (CTPP) Conference – 6/7-6/9
• The Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) Annual Conference – 6/13-6/16
• Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Annual Conference – 6/23-6/26
• American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference and Exhibition – 6/23-6/28