It has been some time since I heard anybody speak about Google’s passage rating (previously generally known as passage indexing). So when it got here up on Mastodon once more, I figured I would remind you all what it’s and what it isn’t.

In brief, passage rating is Google’s method of algorithmically sifting by way of a protracted piece of content material and having the ability to perceive {that a} particular passage or set of passages is about question X, whereas one other particular passage or set of passages in that very same doc may be about question Y. Google is ready to rank the identical piece of content material however totally different passages inside that content material individually and for various queries. Google just isn’t indexing them individually however rating them individually.

Andrew Prince requested about it on Mastodon, saying, “On the subject of passage indexing, is there a restrict as to the scale of the passage Google will contemplate? I’ll caveat this with that I perceive full pages needs to be useful and I do know passage indexing is a lower than ultimate use case.”

I instantly replied with this, “no, passage indexing is about Google understanding content material on a web page with a ton of content material. It simply helps Google perceive messy content material pages higher.” John Mueller of Google then validated what I wrote by saying, “Yep, precisely.”

Google initially calling it passage “indexing” precipitated an amazing quantity of confusion, even years later.

As a reminder, passage rating is stay within the US English since February 20221 and I’ve a ton of tales on this subject, listed below are most (if not all) of them:

Discussion board dialogue at Mastodon.