This year marks a momentous anniversary for us at the U.S. Census Bureau: 30 years of census.gov. In 1994, just five years after the advent of the World Wide Web, we launched census.gov and became one of the first government agencies to have a public website.

Since its inception, census.gov has had many different looks and an expanding array of functionalities. But although our website has evolved, our mission – to serve as the nation’s leading provider of quality data about its people and economy – has not. And over the past 30 years, our site has become a vital tool for the work we do.

For one, it plays a huge role in disseminating our data to the public. Having the Census Bureau's wealth of information about our nation and its people available online is a huge boon to data accessibility. At data.census.gov, you can access our treasure trove of data and content in a single platform. You can also browse by topic or download our datasets.

And we’re continuously looking for the best ways to get you the data you need. We have a host of innovative data tools and apps like My Community Explorer, Census Business Builder and Community Resilience Estimates Tools.

We’re always rolling out data and news products in our newsroom. For example, to make our data more digestible, we have fact sheets and infographics and visualizations. And in 2017, we introduced the groundbreaking content feature America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers, which paints portraits with our data on topics like families, housing, employment, business, education, the economy, emergency management and population.

But stats aren’t all you’ll find on census.gov. You can also get help if you’re participating in a survey and even respond to many of our surveys online. You can participate in webinars and data trainings, contact our regional offices, find partnership opportunities, learn about employment at the Census Bureau and, of course, follow along with my work here at the Director’s Blog.

In addition to expanding the site’s content, we’re working to improve its function. Through feedback and analytics, we’re continually looking at our users’ behavior to find ways to make census.gov easier to use, navigate, and search.

In 2022, we launched a refreshed version of census.gov designed to present data in a more user-friendly way. The site now features a new look, better performance, better functionality on mobile and streamlined navigation. And over the past 5 years, we’ve made our web content and data more discoverable by search engines, too.

Given all its uses and features, it’s no surprise that in the decades since its launch traffic to census.gov and our other online data tools has flourished. Last year, it served over 17 million users who generated more than 50 million visits and viewed over 121 million web pages.

(As you might guess, there’s even more traffic in decennial census years – increased awareness and interest in the 2020 Census drove up our combined web traffic to over 208 million visits and 400 million page views in 2020!)

As we continue our work through the 2030 Census and beyond, we’re committed to providing the quality data that America’s people and communities need… and they will be able to find it right here on Census.gov. I hope you’ll check out what our site has to offer – and stay tuned for more!