When searching for data on the web, you need to make sure that you include search terms relating to the content of the data you’re trying to find as well as some information on the format or source that you expect it to be in:
- Searching by file type: Append your search with ‘filetype:XLS filetype:CSV’, geodata (‘filetype:shp’), or database extracts (‘filetype:MDB, filetype:SQL, filetype:DB’).
- Search by part of a URL. Google: ‘inurl:downloads filetype:xls’ will find all Excel files that have “downloads” in their web address. You can also limit your search to only those results on a single domain name, by searching for, e.g. ‘site: agency.gov’.