Google’s current ranking-systems guide says passage ranking identifies individual sections or passages of a page to better understand the page’s relevance to a search.

Sources

• A Guide to Google Search Ranking Systems | Google Search Central

  Google (developers.google.com) · primary source · retrieved 2026-08-18

  “Passage ranking is an AI system we use to identify individual sections or "passages" of a web page to better understand how relevant” — Section "Passage ranking system"

• A Passage-Based Approach to Learning to Rank Documents

  arXiv · primary source · retrieved 2026-08-18

  “utilizing information induced from document passages to rank the documents” — abstract/introduction, lines 3-5 and 13-15

• Google ranking systems: what they are, which ones are active and what they do

  SEOZoom · retrieved 2026-08-18

  “This system uses artificial intelligence to identify relevant sections within a web page that directly answer a query.” — Passages (Passage ranking) entry