What Is Search Intent ?

Search Intent is basically what the user intent is while they type in any query onto their search engine or for that matter any platform. We will focus majorly upon Google for now as majority of the searches happens in there.

Looking at from user pov, you can understand what they actually wanna see after typing in their query and hitting the search button. For example, If a searcher has entered “Best cars under 1,000”, he is clearly trying to buy a car under 1000cc or at most want to know what the best possible option is there under that value.

And the search will keep changing as we add more zeroes onto the search term and while 10 lakh is something most of content will be made on

You can add as much zero as you want onto the search engine and it’ll provide you with the result which it think is most relatable to you. And this variation is created by just adding one number onto your search query so think about how much variation there will be for actual difference in words.

Types Of Search Intent

According to Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, there are 4 majorly categories which are

Although it encompasses broadly what the searcher want to achieve, you can go in depth about the searcher intention at the time they are putting down their query. There are certain timelines and the intention behind the keyword and If you are able to make content according to that, you two will find each other through a screen. Lets’ take an example and move on with it to perfectly understand what the searcher wants to achieve and the kind of intent they have at that particular point.

Example

I’ll take my own example to make it more personal and practical. Around a couple of month back, I had a sudden urge to start cycling again as my 2 wheeler broke down and it wasn’t time for a new one just yet so the only possible option was to buy a cycle under my budget. Now I know what a cycle is so searching a basic query like “What is Cycle” doesn’t apply here but I one thing I always wanted to have is a geared cycle but again, that is something we can talk with each other to resolve the query but once when I was roaming in Decathlon, my eyes glimpsed over a kind of cycle which the brand produce and here is where the searchers journey mostly get started by. No one in my immediate circle had any idea about the cycle the brand produce but one thing I did got was the name which was “Rockrider” and here I had my search intent clearly laid out with the first category which is

Know / What / Informational

This is the phase where I or the searcher wants to know about something and will visit google for. At this point of time, I had no immediate decision to buy the cycle but It wasn’t a long shot for websites to curate their content to show the same as I was a potential buyer for them.

In-fact If you look at the the adjoined link from where the Google is making the AI overviews from, none of them actually answered my query.

Although my query was solved from just the AI overview, I needed to know more about the brand and product to make more informed choice and I tweaked my query to better show my intent and I achieved that by just changing a word

At this point, I had a good idea about the the product I was looking for which brought me to my the next step in the intent which is

Do / Navigational

At this point, I had a clear image about the brand so the next step is to properly navigate myself to the appropriate stop to make more informed choice before I try put any of my money onto it. Although you can argue that you can make the purchase here, you should try to think about this from real life scenario. If you know about a brand where you wanna purchase products from, you should first at least locate the actual brand store or in this case brand website to validate the authenticity about the future purchase which in our example would be the original decathlon site for which I don’t have to type in any more query except just scrolling further down the SERP.

At this point, the searcher doesn’t have any clue about the specific product but what he does have is a budget and needs which brings us to the next search intent which is

Commercial

Searcher here has an intention to make the purchase and has the money for it, now his intention is to select the best possible option in his range for which he again takes the help of search engine and have some queries which will accompany him in his journey. At this point, I had set a mental budget of 10k but I knew that It can go upto 15K but and anything in between the range seems like the most plausible option.

Each one of them is a different keyword but the intention is purely commercial for all of them. For now let’s go with the 10K one

Decathlon own website is ranking for the keyword with the the product which is closest to the value and if you have ever purchased such products from a big brand, it is the minimum value you will be playing not including taxes, accessories, logistics and my theory has proven right in the next step.

At this point of the search, you need more of a public opinion or else you will be congested with the decorated ecosystem of the brand and purchase something which you might regret later on. You have to take a step back and either change your search query or scroll down further which also shows that ranking in the top doesn’t guarantee a low bounce rate which is how much time a user has spent on your website before clicking off. Although big brands dominate the SERP for popular keywords due to their backlinks and authority , people always look for actual human made curated content to make much more informed choice which in this case would be to look for content other than the one created by the brand which is ironic.

Content like videos and forums here are much more likely to be visited by actual consumers rather than the brand own website. This only works if the brand is big enough to have gathered such a large consumer base that they have formed an opinion and are now presenting it themselves in form of content. The final intent is

Transactional

Where you should have already gathered enough knowledge to get back into the search engine to navigate yourself and are ready to make the purchase which in my case was ST20 by Rockrider and the variation I could have now with my though was the color or any accessories which is more of a personal choice.

This is the final keyword you might enter if you know what you want and your intention is clear as a day.

Search Intent Beyond Google

Although this can demand a separate blog on it’s own and I might make one someday, you have to understand is that because of the emergence of several other platforms, Google isn’t the only place where people type in their query or say intent. YouTube, Instagram, Reddit are now also also the place where searcher intent matters and brand now has to look beyond Google to get the most of the traffic on their handles. For even this example, let’s just go ahead and type the transactional query onto different platform and see where it takes us.

I’ve searched the query on desktop for all of them and I think the result would be different for Instagram specifically If I repeat the same on mobile as on desktop, it shows only the account.

What Else Can Matter in Search Intent ?

Searchers location, the time he is entering the query, even devices can serve drastically different results so curating the content according to that is needed.

As I guessed the search is different on Mobile which brings me to my main point that curate the content according to the user and not just for web. It doesn’t mean spamming the link everywhere, it means to being yourself on the web even if you are a brand which brings me to almost final point.

Make Content people want to see ?

Pretty simple point and yet effective that make the content you would want to see when you search for anything. Of course there are structures, rules and guidelines to follow to get ranked but before all of it, the most important is to make the right content which people want on their search screen. Your audience is searching. Your job is to meet them where they are — across platforms, with the right content, at the right time