Search Intent

Search intent refers to why someone chose to ask a question through a search engine. In other words, search intent is the goal someone sets for their search.

Understanding your audience's search intent is essential to understanding what to include in your content.

When it comes to search goals, there are three main types to consider:

Informative – This is the most common type of search intent. Basically, this is for finding information you have questions about or when you want more information on a particular topic.
Transactional: Refers to people who browse the site with the intention of purchasing something, be it a product, a subscription, etc.
Browsing: This type of intent targets people searching for a specific website. For example, they can type Etsy into a search engine to access the Etsy website.

Search Engine Journal shares more information about optimizing content for each type of search.

User motivation

The purpose or value of the user's search.

Search intent is the user's goal when entering a query into a search engine.

A user can have multiple intentions when submitting a request:

Perhaps you are looking for a product with the intention of buying it.
They can search for information.
You can browse for entertainment purposes or do research.

💡 Example

In fact, typing an SEO tool into your browser will give you lists of the best SEO tools on the market. Since user engagement is an important ranking factor for Google, the logical conclusion is that when a user searches for an SEO tool, they need information about all the tools available. You are not yet far enough in the buying process to commit immediately.

However, the Pages SEO tool returns multiple SEO tool websites that are supposed to sell products, indicating that the search intent is to find a tool to use.

However, don't think that the difference here is largely due to the long tail compared to the more general keyword. Sometimes changing a keyword from singular to plural can completely change the search intent. Therefore, always check the search results for your chosen keywords and see what comes up.

What is the purpose of the search?

Search intent (also known as user intent) is the reason why someone performs a particular search.

The better your website content is organized and relevant to specific searches, the better it will show up in search results. There are four main types of search intent to consider:

Information: The search user is looking for specific information (for example, who is the president of the United States?)
Navigation: A search user wants to visit a specific destination or website (example: Facebook).
Transactional: A search user wants to buy a specific product or service (for example: buy Nike shoes).
Business question: A search user wants to make a purchase soon (example: best basketball shoes).

Search intent is the reason why a user entered a query into a search engine. The intent may be informational, navigational, transactional or commercial. The job of search engines is to find web pages that are closely related to the user's query. Higher-ranked pages are more likely to show what the user was looking for.