Recently, Google announced a bunch of updates and changes to Google Search. Among these announcements, there was one that caught our eye, and we wanted to look deeper into it. In this blog, we will discuss passage-based indexing, which search engine giant is about to begin, and how it will impact SEO.
At times, clearly defined searches prove to be the most challenging to get right because that one line which answers our query is hidden somewhere deep in the pile of texts on a web page. However, Google is once again back with a fascinating breakthrough in the ranking. Now the search engine will not only index web pages but also passages from those pages. Instead of just the entire web page, Google will try and understand the relevancy of individual passages to discover and present what the searcher came looking for. It looks like Google just uncovered a way to find a needle in a haystack.
With this new capability, the search engine will be able to determine that a particular XYZ passage is more relevant to the query than the entire web page.
Is Google Indexing Sections or Fragments of Web Pages?
If you are wondering if Google is indexing sections or fragments of web pages, then you should know that it is not. Google will still be indexing complete web pages. But, it’s search systems will analyze the content and essence of passages when deciding which one is the most relevant, while earlier, they were mainly looking at the entire web page and not specific passages.
Ranking Change vs. Indexing Change
If we look at it now based on the above conclusions, this seems more like a ranking change and not an indexing change as indexing isn’t changing much. What has changed is the way Google ranks your content on the basis of what it discovers on your web page. However, repeating it once again, Google is not indexing passages. It zones into the components of a web page and surfaces those passages better for ranking purposes.
What Signals Will Google Consider Here?
Earlier, there were some powerful signals about a web page that Google’s systems used to consider, including headings and page titles, to determine which content is the most relevant to the search query. While these factors will still matter, the new system will help find the web pages containing one individual passage that especially answers the search query even if the rest of the content seems less relevant or is a bit off-topic.
Are Header Tags More Important Now?
Since Google doesn’t generally discuss specific ranking signals, nothing can be said for sure. Although we think that as this update rolls out, the header tag will carry some weight, and meanwhile, title tags are already regarded as important ranking signals.
Sure, keywords and phrases have always been important ranking factors, but elements like title tags also helped the search engine present the most relevant pages in the search results. Now, based on the information available within an individual passage, Google will be able to display ‘best of the best’ results to its users searching for a needle in the haystack without having to go through the entire page to find their answer.
However, which particular signals hold the most importance seems to be a mystery as of now.
How Are Featured Snippets Different From This?
Google users might be thinking how this new update is different from the already existing ‘featured snippets’ where the search engine displays a passage from a web page to answer the user’s query at the top of the search results?
In this new update, Google’s system will decide the relevance of any content on a web page by understanding the passages. Whereas on the other hand, featured snippets find the most relevant passage in a web page that the search engine has identified to be overall relevant to the user query.
Where Will This Feature Be Most Beneficial?
This new update and change will be most beneficial for users searching for very specific information online, which is buried somewhere deep in an individual passage on some web page even though it may not be the main topic of that particular web page. This will save the user the time, effort, and frustration of going through the whole set of texts to find that one sentence or paragraph that answers their question.
For example, let’s suppose a user performs a Google search with the query “How Google BERT works?” Now before this update was announced, the search engine would have presented you with a SERP containing links to multiple web pages that appears to be relevant to the search query at some level. However, these results might have also included news stories, updates, etc. around Google BERT. These don’t really answer the question that the user came with; rather, it provided some ‘relevant’ links.
Now let’s say one of those web pages had comprehensive content that explained everything, starting from how Google search works to how you can rank better on search results. But somewhere in between, there was a short paragraph that talked about how Google BERT works. Although the entire page was not ‘super relevant’ to the query, with this new update, the system can zoom in on that part and rank the individual passage at the top or the particular web page higher.
Well, of course, you might not do the same search, but we all perform some very specific searches occasionally, and if you have done that, you must know that it is challenging to get accurate answers quickly.
Conclusion
Google keeps rolling out new updates and changes in an attempt to enhance the user experience, and needless to say, it has done a pretty good job at that. This breakthrough seems to be great, and Google revealed that for now, this update would be rolled out in English languages in the United States, and following that, it will be released for other languages and locations too. According to the company, once this update is released worldwide, it will improve approx. 7% of the total Google search queries.