A New Ranking Algorithm from Google

Your search experience will reach new vistas starting 2021 as Google seems ready to roll out the Passage Indexing.

What is the Passage Indexing Algorithm?

Remember the announcement that Google made in September 2019 about BERT? They said BERT will impact 10% of English Language search queries. Now, believe it or not, it actually impacts more than 99% of queries.

Passage Indexing will have a similar ripple effect on the search results page as Google Crawlers will start to understand the relevancy of specific passages within your content.

So, what this literally means is if you are writing about Rockets and the article has a small passage about ingredients within the rocket fuel, Google will be able to pick it up for your users and display it on the search.

However, Google is yet to roll out Passage Indexing, and we don’t know how exactly it will impact the search. It is reported that Passage Index will be live before the New Year, and like always SEO community is eagerly awaiting the launch.

Since its inception, Google has been moving in the direction of better relevancy and context in the search results. You can now see that the two core ranking factors -Content and Links- are valuable only when supplemented with relevance.

The official Google announcement about the Passage Index says the search algorithms will now understand the relevance of the content within a page at the most granular level.

This means that even though the answer related to the search query is deeply buried within a page, Google can pick that particular passage up for you. The search giant says it’s now capable of finding “that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for.”

When rolled out sometime later in December 2020, the Passage Index will impact 7% of search queries worldwide. Since we have BERT’s example right in front of us, the percentage is sure to reach an exponential level within a year’s time.

Passage Indexing Focuses on Ranking Not Display

Let me make it easy for you to understand the concept of Passage Indexing.

First of all, Passage Indexing is not about where Google is going to display the results. It’s a new ranking factor that enables Google to understand individual passages within the page.

Passage ranking isn’t about display. It doesn’t cause snippets to somehow get longer. It’s about better understanding what a page is about by understanding the context of passages of text, where they can be identified, in *addition* to other ranking factors.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 29, 2020

So, what this means is that Passage Indexing will be just like the BERT or Link Analysis algorithm. It works in tandem with other ranking factors to bring better results to the users without making much of a change to the overall look and feel of the SERP.

The confusion about Passage Indexing was caused because of a bad example from Google’s end and Danny Sullivan confirmed this in one of his tweet.

That’s a bad illustration because it compares a regular snippet with a featured snippet. Any regular listing that becomes a featured snippet right now — without passage ranking — looks like that.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) December 29, 2020

Here is an interesting example to understand how Passage Indexing Algorithm works:

Consider the page you want to rank on Google as a book with multiple chapters. Until now Google used to rank the book based on the main topic you have covered.

But when Passage Indexing is enabled, Google will be self-empowered to understand individual chapters within your book. So what this means is that your individual chapters (sections of the page) will show up on results when a highly relevant query is entered on search.

This means you don’t have to do anything as of now to make your pages Passage Indexing friendly because it’s more of an internal ranking change.

However, structuring your content may make it easier for Google’s Passage Indexing algorithm to better understand the meaning of the text.

So, if you are someone who writes long-form content with multiple sub-headings and if you are not seeing organic traction to these articles Passage Indexing may come as a boon.

With the current indexing pattern, Google maybe skipping a few of your granular topics because that content is diluted by the main topic cover. As a result, the page may not show up on search results despite having contextually relevant content.

Passage Indexing aims to help such long-form pages rank for relevant queries.

So, if you are running an eCommerce website, your product pages may not get the benefit of Passage Indexing because the content is usually to the point.

How the Passage Indexing Algorithm Works?

As you can see in the above image, once Google rolls out Passage Indexing, the search engine will start displaying passages as Featured Snippets rather than asking the user to go to a broader page and find the information for himself.

Once rolled out completely, Google will start indexing pages as usual but will start understanding the meaning of the passages within the page.

This means each passage will not be indexed separately. Google will show the most appropriate passages in the results based on the relevance and meaning whenever a query is entered.

If you do a quick Google search for a long-tailed question-based search query, you may end up seeing results with a list of websites. But what you want is a specific answer to your question, and Google cannot deliver it as of now.

However, when the Passage Indexing algorithm gets integrated, Google search will fetch you the most relevant answer for your query.

Interestingly, the page giving you the answer may have long-form content, but Google just saves your time by showing you the most contextually relevant answer.

Here is the official word from Google about Passage Indexing:

So, for example, let’s say you search for something pretty niche like ‘how can I determine if my house windows are UV glass.’ This is a pretty tricky query, and we get lots of webpages that talk about UV glass and how you need a special film, but none of this really helps the layperson take action. Our new algorithm can zoom right into this one passage on a DIY forum that answers the question. Apparently, you can use the reflection of a flame to tell and ignores the rest of the posts on the page that aren’t quite as helpful.

 

Is Google Just Going to Index Parts of pages?

Google officials have confirmed that Passage Index is not going to replace the normal page indexing. This means that Google’s crawlers will continue to index pages entirely but, as it does this, it will try understanding the content and the meaning of each passage within the content.

This is not pointing at a shift in the way Google indexes pages. Still, it’s adding another layer to the existing process, which of course, will alter the rankings of pages.

As far as SEOs are concerned, this is big because, rather than an indexing change, the Passage Indexing algorithm will bring in a paradigm shift in rankings and the way results are displayed.

Difference Between Featured Snippet and Passage Indexing

According to Google, a featured snippet result is a passage from a page that has overall topic relevance.

However, Passage Indexing doesn’t consider the page’s overall relevance but just the relevance of passages to the search query.

Google’s Danny Sullivan also tweeted regarding the same saying, “Featured snippets are used for voice search. They are already identified using different systems than passages.”

Featured snippet are used for voice search. They are already identified using different systems than passages.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 21, 2020

Speculations: Are We Entering Content Optimization 2.0?

Passage Indexing will change the way Google is going to show search results, and it seems like there is a lot to do for SEOs in the days to come.

Google considers meta titles and heading tags as essential signals to understand the context of the content. But that is until they launch the Passage Indexing.

With passive indexing, Google can understand the meaning of individual passages, and as a result, can rank them based on specific search queries.

What’s more interesting is that even if the page discusses a less relevant topic, if the answer to the user’s query is buried inside any of the passages, the page will show up on the search.

Looking at various discussions on Passage Indexing with Googlers, it’s evident that Passage Indexing will have bigger implications.

For example, during an Office Hour discussion John Mueller, the latter said, the results of Passage Indexing may now appear in the featured snippet area but over time passage indexing will determine normal search results.

John said:

So it might be that we start showing these in the featured snippets first because I don’t know we showed that example or maybe that’s the clearest way we can check this. And then at some point we start showing them more in the normal search results as well.

This is a big statement as we know that Google has been downplaying meta description for quite some time and there is a high chance that Passage Indexing will take control of what appears in the meta description moving forward.

Adding to this, I personally don’t think that the character limit of the meta description will be increased to accommodate the whole passage. Instead what Google might do is to extend the scroll to text feature that’s already implemented on featured snippet results to meta description.

This way, the user can navigate to the exact passage within a page that answers their question. But if you are relying on ad revenue, this feature is going to a big hit on your revenue as users will be

Another reason why I see this coming into reality soon is that Google has a history of testing SERP features on a tiny scale before they roll it out on a larger scale.

The current example of passage indexing results appearing in place of the featured snippet and the scroll to text feature can be touted as part of an analysis to understand how useful they are for users.

John’s answer to Glenn Gabe’s question on whether Passage Indexing will just result in better answers for featured snippets is a revelation in itself about how important Passage Indexing is for Google.

Here is what John replied: 

So my kind of taking a step back and just guessing at this, with my internal information. Usually what happens with these things is we will roll them out in one particular place, experiment a bit to find out how to best implement these, how they best work, and then find ways to roll that out a little bit more broadly.

But again kind of like with all of these newer changes in search. Usually, we try them on a small scale and then roll them out a little bit larger over time.

Even if Google is going to restrict Passage Indexing to the featured snippet area or not, you may find an increase in the number of zero-click queries.

This happens because users are getting the best contextually relevant information on the SERP and there is no need for them to visit the website that has curated the content.

So, once the Passage Indexing is made live, keep a close watch on the impressions you receive and the clicks. Also, there is a high chance that the Search Console will add an Enhancement Feature for Passage Indexing and showcase the click generated out of the new feature.

What this also means is that SEOs can now stop focusing on keywords and give more impetus to the topic-relevancy and conclusiveness.

Understanding the user’s concerns and addressing them with content solutions will play a deep role in the success of websites after the roll out of Passage Index.

What I mean to say is long-form content that takes a holistic approach on one particular topic stand a chance to benefit from the new Passage Indexing Algorithm.

Thanks to Google’s Natural Language Processing Algorithm – BERT, understanding the meaning and relevance of each passage is no more a troublesome task for the search engine giant.

Sometimes if you look at the algorithms and features that Google comes up with you can see synchrony in the way they work and how they support in achieving Google’s pristine goal of providing users the best possible results for a given search query.