Coming soon from Google – text ranking

The latest update from Google began rolling out on the English search engine (mainly aimed at the US) on February 11, with the promise that soon all languages will have the same feature. They call it “passage ranking,” and since there is no official Swedish translation, we’ve chosen to call it “text ranking” in this article.

Google itself has said that they predict this will affect around 7% of searches on Google, a search engine that handles roughly 5.6 billion searches per day.

What is passage ranking/text ranking?

Text ranking means that Google has become even better at reading and interpreting text. The search engine will now not only index pages but also “remember” text content to such a degree that it can find specific answers within larger amounts of text. This makes it easier for Google to deliver good search results for specific questions that might be buried in long-form content or where the rest of the page doesn’t match the search intent.

Let’s say you search for “how do I know if a mirror is a two-way mirror?” You’re only looking to find out if there’s a way to tell if a mirror is actually a window, like the ones seen in interrogation rooms in American crime shows.

The search engine may only find results where sites are selling two-way mirrors or solutions for creating the same effect—not exactly what you’re looking for. But then it finds a forum where a post mentions how to check if a mirror is two-way. The rest of the post may be about something else, but this is still the snippet Google presents to the user.

What does text ranking look like?

The search engine chooses to show a text excerpt at the top of the search results, even if the rest of the page doesn’t match the query. This will appear as an expanded search result, similar to a featured snippet. The snippet containing the answer to your question will be displayed above all other results. You could call this a refinement of featured snippets.

Has Google’s way of indexing changed?

No, Google hasn’t changed how it indexes pages. The search engine has simply become better at evaluating and understanding page content. Previously, it relied more on an overall view of the content, but now it examines texts in greater detail.

However, how pages are indexed remains the same: the search engine does not index specific text passages but continues to index full pages.

What should you keep in mind?

H1s and titles are still important ranking signals, as they give Google an idea of what the page is about. These remain crucial to optimize. But the advantage is that content on your site that might not be directly tied to your main business can suddenly appear at the top for specific questions. At the same time, there’s a risk that you may lose first place for content that previously ranked well, if Google can now find answers that better match search intent—even if those answers are on a “weaker” page.

This is essentially a refinement of search results, an improvement for users, and not something site owners can directly control. Just keep producing high-quality, unique content that helps your visitors. That is by far the best way to maintain and improve your rankings.