FAQ

From Freebase

What is Freebase?

What is Freebase?

Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed collection of structured data, and a platform for accessing and manipulating that data via the Freebase API.

More information: What is Freebase?

How big is Freebase?

Freebase contains about 20 million topics (aka entities) at the time of writing; for the latest number you can visit the Explore page which always has the latest numbers. There are hundreds of millions of assertions or facts about those entities.

Is Freebase a wiki?

No, though it shares some similarities with open wiki projects:

• Freebase is a free source of information
• Freebase is a collaborative project, and Freebase data may be edited by anyone
• Most of the data in Freebase is openly licensed under Creative Commons

However:

• Freebase does not run on wiki software, but on a graph database that represents structured data
• Most wikis arrange information primarily in the form of text-based articles, while Freebase houses information in a structured, machine-readable database format

(Note that although this documentation is part of a wiki, the Freebase documentation wiki is not Freebase.)

How can I query Freebase?

Is it SQL? Is there a console? Is there a web interface or I have to create my API?

Is Freebase a Semantic Web project?

Yes, Freebase is part of the Semantic Web. We emit Linked Open Data (via RDF) for all our entities, and are involved in various SemWeb projects/communities/etc.

What is your relationship with DBPedia?

see: Freebase and dbpedia
Freebase and DBPedia both extract structured data from Wikipedia and make RDF available. We are both part of the web of data and there are many connections between topics in Freebase and in DBPedia. People have also done work mapping between the two ontologies.

Differences between the two projects include:

• Freebase imports data from a wide variety of sources, not just Wikipedia, whereas DBPedia focuses on just Wikipedia data
• DBPedia is funded by grants/sponsorships from various organisations, while Freebase is owned and funded by Google, an incorporated company.

Freebase Data

Where does the information in Freebase come from?

Initially, Freebase was seeded by pulling in information from a large number of high-quality open data sources, such as Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and others. The Freebase community along with the internal Freebase team continue to drive the growth of the graph – focusing on bulk, algorithmic data imports, data extraction from free text, ongoing synchronization of data feeds, and rigorous quality management.

More information: Data sources

Why don't you import...?

If you're wondering why we don't import a certain set of data or information, maybe we should. It's possible we haven't yet because:

• We didn't know about it until you mentioned it;
• The licenses are incompatible or the TOS prevents us from doing so;
• It isn't high on the priority list

In cases of license incompatibility or unfriendly TOSs, we would need to seek permission from the owner of the data. If loading the data isn't high priority for existing Freebase staff/volunteers, but you really want it loaded, we can point you at some tools/techniques and provide support for you to load it yourself via our Freebase API. Read more about loading data.

Some ad-hoc tools[1][2] are available for this task, and there is some ability to import a list with the client, though many await the Freebase Loader.

How do you ensure data quality?

Freebase relies on the same model of community collaboration and editing that Wikipedia and other open information projects have used. While some inaccurate information is inevitable, that same information can be corrected by anyone, and people make incremental improvements all the time. (For more information on our approach to intentional errors, see our contribution guidelines). We have also developed a group of trusted Freebase experts to help keep an eye on things, and we believe that the efforts of a whole community keeps our information moving in the right direction. Finally, we have developed a large number of ongoing internal and community processes that help us maintain the integrity of Freebase data. We have feeds of new changes that community members can review, and scripts that we run to look for things that might indicate an error. For example, our Data games apply a crowdsourcing methodology to data reconciliation and accuracy.

Why is my data in Freebase? I don't want it to be!

See: Personal data

How can I remove personal data from Freebase?

See: Personal data

Developers

What are the limits on use of your API?

You may use Freebase's API for almost any use, including commercial uses, up to a limit of 100,000 API calls per day. See the Freebase Terms of Service for more information. If you are interested in using the Freebase API beyond 100,000 API calls per day, please contact Metaweb.

What API libraries do you have?

See programming languages to see if there is a library for your language of choice.

How do I get a list of current countries?

This comes up all the time on our mailing list.

If you simply query for /location/country you will get historical countries as well as current ones. Some techniques for getting a more current/relevant list include:

• only ask for those which are not also typed with /location/dated_location and have an end date
• only ask for those that have an ISO code

The following query (adapted from that posted by Glenn MacDonald in this email message) is a good query for finding current countries:

[{
  "id": null,
  "name": null,
  "type": "/location/country",
  "/location/administrative_division/country": {"id": null, "optional": "forbidden"},
  "/location/dated_location/date_dissolved": {"value": null, "optional": "forbidden"},
  "form_of_government": {"id": "/en/government_in_exile", "optional": "forbidden"}
}]​

Commercial Use and Business Matters

What are the rules for using data in Freebase?

It depends on what type of content it is. Data is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Only (or CC-BY) license. This means you are free to use it on your site, as long as you credit the Freebase community appropriately. The Freebase attribution policy has all the details. Many of the images in Freebase are also CC-BY, although some images are hosted under different license terms, like GFDL (which is similar to CC-BY), public domain, or Fair Use, and you can use the Freebase API to filter your results by license type. Finally, long descriptions that they have pulled in from Wikipedia are licensed under the GFDL.

Can I use Freebase data for my business?

Yes, you are allowed under the terms of Freebase's Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license, as long as you attribute Freebase as the source of your data. See the Freebase Terms of Service for more detail.

API use is limited to 100,000 requests per day. If you want an increased quota, please open a ticket in Jira.

Can I get a private installation of the Freebase platform?

Freebase does not offer an installable version of the platform for individual use. However, all the data is openly licensed under Creative Commons, and data dumps are available, so you can build your own apps based on that data using a database backend or triple store of your choice.

What is the relationship between Freebase and Metaweb?

Metaweb is the commercial entity that sponsored and developed the Freebase platform. Metaweb was acquired by Google in July, 2010.

Will the licensing of information in Freebase ever change?

No. The data in Freebase has already been licensed under CC-BY, which means it will always be available under that license; adding a new license would not impact the current corpus of data. Furthermore, all of the data in Freebase is available for download, and people are allowed to store it locally.