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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.

In the slew of Google Search announcements from last week, one of the more interesting bits was a section on "passage indexing." As I wrote in my coverage, I asked Google for more information on that and I wrote it up in detail on Search Engine Land. But I think it is important I cover it in detail here as well, as there is still confusion around this upcoming Google Search launch.

Google made a boat load of announcements last night around Google Search. Now, while some of the announcements were things already launched, many were new. Google covered changes to BERT, how it understands passages and subtopics on a page, to humming to Google and health and safety features and so much more.

Google announced it has suspended, temporarily, the request indexing feature, within the URL inspection tool in Search Console. It didn't say why, outside of making infrastructure changes. But it comes at a bad time as tons of sites are complaining about indexing issues with Google Search.

As we have been covering, the Google Search results have been pretty unstable recently. Yesterday and this morning are no different. I am getting complaints both about indexing issues and ranking changes over the past 24-hours or so and honestly, I have no idea if this is a feature or a bug or both.

Over the past week or so, the search tracking tools have been showing a lot fluctuations, volatility and instability. We know Google has had a number of bugs that it is still actually working on resolving. All of that can cause volatility in the search results but is it just that?

Featured Snippet Answers Based on Context

Last month I wrote about answer passages when Google decides what answers to show in response to queries that are asking questions, in the post, Featured Snippet Answer Scores Ranking Signals. In that...