I’ve searched on The Google for a few different cities recently and in every batch of search results, city-data.com has come up. The first few times I clicked through, the sparseness of the design led me to think that it was probably just some cheap-o script that was pulling information from other sites and existed to sell advertising and not provide real content. But then I started to take a closer look at the pages.
First of all, there are very few, if any, ads. Secondly, there really is a lot of information about each city. Even if it’s being pulled from other sources (“This data has been compiled from multiple government and commercial sources”), bringing it together the way they do is pretty impressive. They’ve got everything from population to demographics to number of cloudy days. Their discussion forums are tied in nicely and seem quite active, if somewhat troll-heavy.
Sure, the interface is pretty plain jane and could do with a nice redesign, but the content is there. City-data.com’s got a shot. If only there wasn’t that darn dash in their domain name…
Posted in Technology
Paul November 9, 2006, 2:55 pm
love your site! 🙂
Wait a minute… yeah. That IS a very nice site!
Doh.
What I’m trying to say is, I enjoy the information there. Ringtones. Viagra.
ARGH!
jk November 9, 2006, 9:36 pm
What?
Steve A November 9, 2006, 11:33 pm
I’ve used city-data for a lot of things. Most often, as a restaurant consultant, I point other folks there to see it and try to get them to understand some of the information available to them. And yes, it’s FREE!
Ciao,