Google Squashes Myths Around Passage Indexing

Let me start off by saying, I do not blame the SEO community for being confused over Google’s announcement of passage indexing. Heck, Google called it “indexing” but then told me it is not indexing, it is a ranking thing. Why they called it that? I have no idea. But at least Google officially posted on public channels more information about it.

As I said the other day Google Passage Ranking, It Is Not Passage Indexing. This was based on a question and answer session I had with Google after the Google Search On 2020 announcements. When Google first announced this as “passage indexing,” I thought, wow – Techpassages. Well, it turns out, no, Google is not doing that.

Google wrote on Twitter yesterday, which is what I’ve been saying for days, “this change doesn’t mean we’re indexing individual passages independently of pages. We’re still indexing pages and considering info about entire pages for ranking. But now we can also consider passages from pages as an additional ranking factor.”

This change doesn’t mean we’re indexing individual passages independently of pages. We’re still indexing pages and considering info about entire pages for ranking. But now we can also consider passages from pages as an additional ranking factor….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 20, 2020

Still, after Google posted that, people still said no, Google is indexing passages. So Danny Sullivan from Google said no!

As said in the tweet, and here in my other reply, we’re not indexing passages independently of web pages: https://t.co/EP7yKMDPfJ

As to the 2 days stuff. I spent 20 minutes writing these yesterday, after it seemed helpful for us to share more….

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 20, 2020

Because people thought we were doing this in addition to indexing pages, so we want to be extra clear. Which we thought was extra clear. But….

We are not indexing passages. Period.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 20, 2020

Again, when this goes live, IT IS NOT LIVE YET, but should be in a couple of months, it will impact 7% of queries, for the better:

Last week, we shared about how we will soon identify individual passages of a web page to better understand how relevant a page is to a search. This will be a global change improving 7% of queries:https://t.co/iQoXktmSkt

In this thread, more about how it works…. pic.twitter.com/2oqdoCkt6r

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 20, 2020

Danny and Google will announce when it goes live:

We’ll update the thread when it goes live.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 20, 2020

In short, this is how it works:

With our new technology, we’ll be able to better identify and understand key passages on a web page. This will help us surface content that might otherwise not be seen as relevant when considering a page only as a whole….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 20, 2020

Here is Google saying there is nothing for SEOs or site owners to do:

There’s nothing special creators need to do here. Continue to focus on great content, with all the advice we offer: https://t.co/gcM0rvYaFb

It just means in some cases, we may now do a better job of surfacing content, no work required on the part of creators.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 20, 2020

But yea, SEOs will not believe that, and honestly, they shouldn’t. They should test, like SEOs do. Test. But you cannot really test your results until it goes live.

I mean, I almost joked that inevitably someone will start pushing “passage SEO” as a thing. It’s not, and time is probably better spent by people focusing on great pages with great content that make sense for users since, you know, that’s what are systems seek to reward.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 20, 2020

Time will tell but again, here are some of the myths Google tried to squash yesterday.

Forum discussion at Twitter.