According To Tomek: Passage Ranking

Before 2021, Google always checked if the entire page is relevant to a given query when displaying pages in the search results.

In some cases this is straightforward, but when the page is long and contains information on multiple topics, it’s difficult to determine the main topic of the page. 

With the announcement of passage ranking, Google started to evaluate pages in a more granular way.  It is able to rank pages based on individual passages independently of the rest of the page’s content.  

So, even if a page as a whole is not considered relevant to a query,  Google may still detect that some key passages are relevant. And, as a consequence, a page can still rank for that query. 

Below you can find a couple of tweets by Danny Sullivan explaining the topic. 

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

Topic detection

Google clearly states there is no separate index for passages. 

https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/1318635973207453696

Trying to connect the dots, I went back to our webinar with Martin Splitt from August this year. 

He said that Google is detecting the main theme of a page as well as other topics.

“We might say: This page is for [topic] A and somehow, for B. Topic A is definitely the main thing, and then there’s topic B and somehow also topic C somewhat in there.

We’re indexing it all, but we’re kind of labeling it as “this is definitely for A, which means that it’s not showing up for B and C. (…)

Just don’t expect us to treat this page equally for A, B, and C. Understand that we are treating it as mainly about A.“

It seems to me that this may change with passage ranking. Google might label a page as related to topic A (first passage), topic B (second passage), topic C (third passage). topic ABC (collection of passages) and check if these passages are relevant to a given query. 

Is passage ranking live?

Passage ranking went live for English-language queries on February 10th, 2021, and is rolled out to all languages at this point.

How many queries were affected by passage ranking?

“This will be a global change improving 7% of queries”. 7% may not seem like much, but comparing it to some updates from the past, this is likely a very significant change.

Are the passages ranking independently of the pages?

No. According to Google’s announcements, all the information Google has about a page will be taken into consideration when ranking a passage from the page.

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

Wrapping up

Passage ranking seems like a good change in that it potentially allows content creators to more freely shape the content on their websites. On the other hand, it is likely to contribute to the growing problem of “zero-click searches”.

As a summary, I prepared a table showing what will change.