Google Search: Highlighting Specific Passages

A couple of days ago, I came across an article outlining updates in Google Search algorithms driven mostly by AI applications. I did not think much of it at first although the new hum to search was pretty interesting. I’m sure a lot of us already experienced having a particular tune stuck on our brains and then trying to determine the title by asking Google to tells us the title of the song that goes “da-da-daaa-daaa” or something along those lines. Aren’t we asking too much from Google? Well, apparently the demand is quite high so now we can hum the tune and then Google will try its best to tell us what that song us. To read more about these updates, you may read the article here.

Anyway, as amazed as I am with hum to search, there’s another update that is worth shining the spotlight on — search results now lead you specific passages related to the phrase you used. What do I mean? For example, as seen in the screenshot below, I am searching using the phrase “money is portable”.

Traditionally, clicking on that result will bring you to the main page as shown below:

However, now, if your search phrase matches with the content, you will be directed to that specific part of the page and what you’re looking for is highlighted:

At first, I thought it’s an exact match. However, as you can see in the results, that’s not the case. Pretty awesome (and maybe a bit alarming). Another visible change is how the URLs are formatted.

Removing that part in the URL brings you back to the very beginning of the webpage.

At the moment, this feature is not yet generally-available and because it’s fairly new, some search results do not allow you to go to specific passages. However, this is definitely a game-changer in more ways than one.