Last year, Google released a new search function which allows users to sift through global public data.

Now before any of you get concerned with Privacy – this isn’t your personal stats and online data – it’s more generic public information. Here’s an excerpt from the release post last year.

“We just launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data. So for example, when comparing Santa Clara county data to the national unemployment rate, it becomes clear not only that Santa Clara’s peak during 2002-2003 was really dramatic, but also that the recent increase is a bit more drastic than the national rate:”

This video gives a quick summary on how it works:

Google has now released the Public Data Explorer into Google Labs.

Google Public Data Explorer takes the enormous amount of data available and provides useful visualization capabilities – helping users make sense of the stats.

“This information is only useful if it’s easy to access, understand and communicate. That’s why today we’re also releasing the Google Public Data Explorer in Labs, a new experimental product designed to help people comprehend data and statistics through rich visualizations.”

To give you some idea of what information people are researching in the Public Data search, Google has released its top search topics are. Here’s the Top 10:

1. School comparisons
2. Unemployment
3. Population
4. Sales tax
5. Salaries
6. Exchange rates
7. Crime statistics
8. Health statistics (health conditions)
9. Disaster statistics
10. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

For the numbers and stats buffs, they’ll love the data that’s available in the database. I recommend heading over and having a dig around the data.