Passage ranking
Google's ability to rank a page based on the relevance of a specific passage within it, even when the page overall is about…
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Passage ranking announced
Google announced it would index and rank individual passages within a page, not just whole pages.
What changed
At its Search On event Google said it would begin ranking specific passages from a page, so a single relevant section of a long, loosely organised document could surface for a niche query. Google said it expected the change to affect about 7% of queries in all languages once fully rolled out. It stressed that pages were still indexed as wholes and that passage ranking was an additional retrieval signal, not a replacement.
Timing
Rollout began 15 October 2020. No completion date was announced. Rankings typically remain unstable for the whole rollout window, so measurements taken inside it are not a reliable read on the outcome.