Google is testing a new type of Schema markup designed for scientific data to be more easily understood by search engines. The web is filled with scientific metadata which Google has to extract from HTML in order for it to be served by those looking at it.
Now, Google has created its own structured markup for scientific datasets. This allows webmasters to provide Google with a set of “instructions” for how to read the scientific data contained on a page.
Google gives the example of a web page with historical snow levels being marked up with data related to:
- Temporal coverage
- Time period
- Spatial coverage
- Citations
- Licenses
- and more
Scientific dataset markup is available right now for site owners to experiment with. It will have no bearing on search at the moment until it is rolled out generally. However, you can verify the markup using the structured data testing tool.
Google says the following datasets can be marked up with structured data:
- A table or a CSV file with some data
- 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 the data
- Anything that looks like a dataset to you
For more information about how to apply this new set of Schema markup, see Google’s help document.
