Search intent
Search intent is the goal behind a search query – whether the user wants information, a specific website, to compare options or to buy something.
What is search intent?
Search intent (also called user intent) is the goal a person has when typing a query into a search engine. Search engines rank the pages that best satisfy this goal, so understanding intent is just as important as choosing the right keyword. A page that targets a keyword but ignores its intent will struggle to rank.
Search intent is commonly grouped into four types:
- Informational: The user wants to learn something, e.g. “what is crawl budget”.
- Navigational: The user wants to reach a specific website or brand, e.g. “google search console login”.
- Commercial: The user is researching options before a decision, e.g. “best international SEO agency”.
- Transactional: The user is ready to act, e.g. “book SEO audit”.
The easiest way to identify intent is to look at what currently ranks: if the top results are guides, Google interprets the query as informational; if they are product or service pages, it expects a commercial or transactional answer. Intent can also vary between countries for the same query, which is one more reason to analyze search results market by market during keyword research.