I always make the point that data is everywhere \u2013 and that a lot of it is free. Companies don\u2019t necessarily have to build their own massive data repositories before starting with big data analytics. The moves by companies and governments to put large amounts of information into the public domain have made large volumes of data accessible to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any company, from big blue chip corporations to the tiniest start-up can now leverage more data than ever before. Many of my clients ask me for the top data sources they could use in their big data endeavor and here\u2019s my rundown of some of the best free big data sources available today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
http:\/\/data.gov<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The US Government pledged last year to make all government data available freely online. This site is the first stage and acts as a portal to all sorts of amazing information on everything from climate to crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.census.gov\/data.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A wealth of information on the lives of US citizens covering population data, geographic data and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/open-data.europa.eu\/en\/data\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the above, but based on data from European Union institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/data.gov.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Data from the UK Government, including the British National Bibliography \u2013 metadata on all UK books and publications since 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.cia.gov\/library\/publications\/the-world-factbook\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Information on history, population, economy, government, infrastructure and military of 267 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.healthdata.gov\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n 125 years of US healthcare data including claim-level Medicare data, epidemiology and population statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.hscic.gov.uk\/home<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Health data sets from the UK National Health Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/datasets<\/p>\n\n\n\n Huge resource of public data, including the 1000 Genome Project, an attempt to build the most comprehensive database of human genetic information and NASA\u2019s database of satellite imagery of Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/developers.facebook.com\/docs\/graph-api<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Although much of the information on users\u2019 Facebook profile is private, a lot isn\u2019t \u2013 Facebook provide the Graph API as a way of querying the huge amount of information that its users are happy to share with the world (or can\u2019t hide because they haven\u2019t worked out how the privacy settings work). <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.gapminder.org\/data\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Compilation of data from sources including the World Health Organization and World Bank covering economic, medical and social statistics from around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/explore<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Statistics on search volume (as a proportion of total search) for any given term, since 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.google.com\/finance<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n 40 years\u2019 worth of stock market data, updated in real time. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/books\/ngrams\/books\/datasetsv2.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n Search and analyze the full text of any of the millions of books digitised as part of the Google Books project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.ncdc.noaa.gov\/data-access\/quick-links#loc-clim<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Huge collection of environmental, meteorological and climate data sets from the US National Climatic Data Center. The world\u2019s largest archive of weather data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/wiki.dbpedia.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wikipedia is comprised of millions of pieces of data, structured and unstructured on every subject under the sun. DBPedia is an ambitious project to catalogue and create a public, freely distributable database allowing anyone to analyze this data. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/topsy.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Free, comprehensive social media data is hard to come by \u2013 after all their data is what generates profits for the big players (Facebook, Twitter etc) so they don\u2019t want to give it away. However Topsy provides a searchable database of public tweets going back to 2006 as well as several tools to analyze the conversations. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/likebutton.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mines Facebook\u2019s public data – globally and from your own network – to give an overview of what people \u201cLike\u201d at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/developer.nytimes.com\/docs<\/p>\n\n\n\n Searchable, indexed archive of news articles going back to 1851. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.freebase.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A community-compiled database of structured data about people, places and things, with over 45 million entries.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUS Census Bureau<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
European Union Open Data Portal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Data.gov.uk<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The CIA World Factbook<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Healthdata.gov<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
NHS Health and Social Care Information<\/strong> Centre<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Amazon Web Services public datasets<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Facebook Graph <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gapminder<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Google Trends<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Google Finance<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Google Books Ngrams<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
National Climatic Data Center<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
DBPedia<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Topsy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Likebutton<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
New York Times<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Freebase<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Million Song Data Set<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n