Schema and structured data expert, Aaron Bradley posted on Google+ that so changes to the datasets documentation page shows signs that maybe the datasets structured data will soon rollout and be available to webmasters, SEOs, publishers in the rich results in Google search.
Aaron explained that Google dropped the paw icon in the notice with a star, which he said "suggests that the roll-out of dataset rich results is imminent."
Before:
After:
He also said "another indication that this is moving out of (pre-)beta is that the "express interest" button has been removed."
Datasets that are marked up make them easier for others to interpret by using the markup to understand the data better and translate that understanding into a more visual illustration of that data. Google said it can be used for these cases:
- A table or a CSV file with some data
- An organized collection of tables
- A file in a proprietary format that contains data
- A collection of files that together constitute some meaningful dataset
- A structured object with data in some other format that you might want to load into a special tool for processing
- Images capturing data
- Files relating to machine learning, such as trained parameters or neural network structure definitions
- Anything that looks like a dataset to you
Forum discussion at Google+.