New Files Make American FactFinder Your One Stop for Key Census Bureau Data

The new American FactFinder, the U.S. Census Bureau’s statistics and information search engine introduced one year ago, has been updated with files formerly found in its “legacy” version. Users now have access to more than 60 important data sets in the new FactFinder English interface and 14 data sets in the Spanish interface.

“Users no longer have to navigate between two Web tools,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said. “They now have one stop for the most important data sets from the Census Bureau.”

Nearly all of the information from the older version has been uploaded to the new American FactFinder website. At your fingertips, you now will have access to more than 250 billion data cells and statistics for more than —

- 40,000 tables
- 1,500 population groups and tribes
- 80,000 business and industry codes
- 12 million geographies for each decennial census

The new American FactFinder provides users with one-stop access to results from the decennial census (2010 and 2000), the economic census (2002 and 2007), American Community Survey, population estimates and key annual economic surveys. American FactFinder has statistics on a variety of topics, such as income, poverty, education, and housing.

Census staff are aware of customer issues with the new American Fact Finder and are working on both short term and long term solutions to address these issues, improve search and navigation, and enhance customer satisfaction

Eventually, the 2010 Census Equal Employment Opportunity File, the American Housing Survey and the census of governments statistics will be released through the new American FactFinder.

This expansion has permitted the Census Bureau to retire the original version of American FactFinder on Jan. 20 after 12 years of service. Several files will be available only on the Census Bureau FTP (file transfer protocol) site.

Any deep links or bookmarks in the older version of American FactFinder no longer work. The Census Bureau held a webinar to discuss the transfer of files to the new American FactFinder and provide guidance on building deep links, searching and bookmarking in the new site, as well as accessing the information that had previously been on the legacy FactFinder through an archived FTP site. For those who missed it, an archived version will be available in the next few days HERE.

If you need a few facts in a hurry, you can look at Quick Facts, which give you fast, easy statistics about people, business, and geography. If you are a new user of census data, this may give you what you need in a simple, easy-to-navigate format.