Methodology & Data Sources

Zoo & Aquarium Guide is a reference for zoos and aquariums across the United States. This page explains exactly how the guide is built — the source of the data, what we choose to publish and index, and how we handle facts we are not sure about. The goal is a useful answer with visible assumptions, not a black box.

Where the data comes from

Every venue in this guide is drawn from Wikidata, a structured, openly licensed knowledge base maintained by a global community, released under the CC0 public-domain dedication. We query Wikidata for zoos and aquariums (items typed zoo (Q43501) or aquarium (Q2281788)) and rebuild the guide from that export: name, coordinates, venue type, resolved city/state where Wikidata records one, and an official website where one is recorded.

The current corpus is 391 zoos and aquariums. We do not add venues from unsourced trivia pages, forums, or user submissions.

What we do not fabricate

Admission price, opening hours, AZA (Association of Zoos & Aquariums) accreditation, and each venue’s animal roster are not in the current Wikidata export for these venues. We show them only once we have sourced them from a further pass (AZA accredited-member reconciliation, OpenStreetMap gap-fill, a per-venue animal-roster pull) — until then, a venue page simply omits that field rather than guessing. If a venue page links to an official website, check that site for current hours, admission, and animal information.

What we publish, and what we index

Every valid venue record — real name, valid coordinates, a resolved state — is built and reachable on the site, so every internal link (state hubs, nearby-venue rails, search) resolves. But we do not send a thin page to Google just to have more pages indexed. A venue page is added to the sitemap and left indexable only when the record carries genuine per-page substance beyond “name + type + coordinates”: a resolved state plus a website or a known city.

Today that is 333 of 391 venues. The rest stay live and linked — you can browse to them, and they resolve — but carry a noindex, follow signal and are left out of the sitemap until enrichment gives them enough real substance to earn a place in the index. This is the same index-floor approach we use across our reference sites: quality-first, growing the indexed set only as real data is added, never templated mass.

Accuracy and uncertainty

Venue data drawn from a community-maintained knowledge base is inherently incomplete — not every zoo or aquarium has a resolved city or state, and a listed “website” field can go stale. We show what the source supports and avoid overstating it. If a record looks wrong or a venue is missing, tell us at hello@zooaquariumguide.co and we will check it against the source.

How often it refreshes

Because Wikidata is continuously edited, the guide improves as new statements are added and existing ones are corrected upstream. Planned enrichment passes — AZA accredited-member reconciliation, a per-venue animal-roster pull, and OpenStreetMap opening-hours and admission tags — will widen both the corpus and the indexed subset over time, rather than staying frozen at launch.

Licensing and attribution

The underlying venue facts come from Wikidata and are dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Map rendering uses OpenStreetMap data. Zoo & Aquarium Guide is built and operated by Purcell Analytics. For more on the project, see About.