Google Squashes Myths Around Passage Indexing

Oct 21, 2020 - 7:40 am 6 by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google Passage Indexing Clarify

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 - Google is now indexing individual passages. 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."

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

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:

Danny and Google will announce when it goes live:

In short, this is how it works:

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

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.

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

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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