Scientific Content (AVG: 3.41)

Authority
This website is part of a larger commercial website run by Geocommunity. The free data at GIS Data Depot are sponsored through the advertising. There is no indication of who specifically works on this site, and there is no means of verifying the credibility of the author, although there are means of verifying the credibility of the data.

Accuracy
The purpose of this website is to get the consumer to buy data from Geocommunity. This is made clear in the mission statement of the company. But the free data has no obvious errors, and there are links to the sources of their data (although the links are not next to the data, but rather at the bottom of the homepage). Geocommunity compiled free data from several online sources to create this Data Depot.

Objectivity
This is a corporate site, so there are ads and pop-ups. Much of the data for smaller geographic areas (i.e. 7.5" quads) are free, but is provided to convince people to buy data from Geocommunity.

Currency
The data seems fairly current since there is data available that was only recently released.

Coverage
The free data is only available for smaller areas, and so requires some effort to work with. If you are willing to pay, there is a lot more data available. The sources are cited, but are only on one page of the site, and so can be hard to find. The content is appropriate for people familiar with GIS, and the site makes this clear.

Geospatial Operations (AVG: 2.41)

Sites From Which You Can Download Data
This site has some nice features for people who want to download GIS data. The "Data Resources and Help" sections are very useful. In these sections, the data sources are listed with information about the files, the data, and how to convert the files. There is also information and instructions on how to deal with such file types as .e00 files, DEM's, and SDTS files. I only evaluated the free data, but the quality is good, even if the data is limited to the smallest geographic units. You can access the data in two ways: for free with a normal download, or for about $20 a month for a premium download. I was unable to determine the advantage to the premium download, except that there were more files available. The files downloaded fairly quickly. The metadata was in a separate file if it was available. Not all files had metadata, and the people at Geocommunity claim to be trying to fix this problem. There are no previews for the data. There were very few links to sites with similar data since the goal of this site is to get people to buy data from them. Overall, this site is useful for basic GIS data for smaller areas, and for tutorial information about file types and conversions.

General Characteristics (AVG: 3.12)

Load Time
The load time is not bad, although is does take a second since there are flashing ads and a pop up ad.

Appearance
This site is not very attractive. There is a lot of clutter, and it is hard to find what you want. The ads draw the most attention. This is appropriate for the purpose of this site, but is does make it difficult to find the free data at the GIS Data Depot.

Structure and Navigation
This site is a little difficult to navigate around. Often, when you try to find something, you are brought to an ad. The data is not the hard to find, but the information about the data is harder. This information is located only on the first page, and you have to scroll down past many ads to find it. You find free data by finding the country you want, or clicking on a state on a US map. There is a search engine under the map, but this only seems to lead you to articles, not data.

Content
The content of this site is pretty good. The text is clear and easy to read. More data are available if you are willing to pay. A search engine is available, but its results are confusing, and do not take you to data.

Usability
The usability of this site was good. The site works on all systems, and there is no horizontal scrolling.

Other Comments

This is a corporate site, and the sale pitches can get annoying. But this site is very good for two things: data for small areas in the US, and information about file types and conversions.

Other Comments by Evaluators

"The site has a lot of data available but it must be purchased. I find this site difficult to follow and everywhere there is a lot of advertising. It seems like the site's purpose is to make money."

"This website provides many sources of GIS data. Many of the data are free and can be directly download from the web with metadata. On the other hand, many data are not free and need to pay for in order to obtain data. The downside is that the site needs a graphical query interface for users but not just text-based search because often user search data by matching coordinates but not location/quad names."

"This is probably the worst web site in the external evaluation. The site is crowded with content and advertisements, making difficult to find useful information. It does not have a balanced design, and requires too much vertical scrolling. The site does not provide previews of downloadable data."

"This site offers a good amount of geographic data and information in a newsletter format, but the overall appearance is very cluttered and a little confusing. Instead of having everything listed on the main page, navigation to a page for each data category would make this site easier to peruse and use. Another suggestion would be to include a graphical view of the data."

"The GIS Data Depot has a large amount of advertising that makes for a distracting page layout. The site does do a nice job of making the data available to users. The geographic location of the data is provided, as well as being in a user-friendly format there are instructions on how to convert the data into another format. Basic appearance and navigation issues were adequately handled, not very good but not horrible either."