Definition
Passage indexing is the practice of storing and retrieving individual passages of a page rather than the page as a whole. A search system splits content into passages, indexes each one, and can return a single passage as an answer even when the rest of the page is unrelated. It decides whether a passage exists as a retrievable unit at all.Why It Matters for AI Search
A model answers from a passage, not a URL. Passage indexing is why a single well-formed paragraph can be cited from a long page, and why a strong page with no cleanly separable passages can go unused. It is distinct from passage ranking, which decides the order among passages already retrieved. Indexing decides whether the passage is retrievable in the first place. Structuring content into self-contained passages is what makes it indexable at this grain.Related Terms
Passage ranking
Distinct from
Chunking
See also
Passage-level optimization
See also
Semantic search
See also
Quotability
See also