Commercial Data Vendor Releases Free ZIP Code Database

Feb. 2, 2013 - PRLog -- For the first time in its 21 year history, GreatData.com has recently released a free ZIP Code Database for use primarily by students, researchers and programmers needing demo data. This file has the most asked for data elements:

- ZIP Code

- State Abbreviation

- Standardized City Name

- Latitude and Longitude

Why the change? We asked Paul Duggan, the owner. "For years we didn't want to release a file because it could cause us to lose clients. There are others offering free products and by and large the data is very inaccurate. We've heard from undergraduate and graduate students doing a research paper that couldn't afford a commercial-grade product, but needed pretty accurate data. We didn't like what we saw available at other sites and didn't want that type of data end up in research papers, so we decided to create a product that's good, but not as high quality as our commercial product."

Duggan adds, "We update our free database quarterly, so that you can be assured that it has the latest ZIP Codes. The City and County names are cleaned up USPS names (we also convert the names to upper and lower-case names). Also, the latitude and longitude is truncated down to 2 decimal positions (our commercial-grade data goes to 6 decimal positions) and should be acceptable for research or demoing a store locator or similar application."

The database is available at: GreatData.com/free-zip-code-database