Search Intent: What It Is, and How I Check It Before I Write A Page
Most pages that fail do not fail on speed, links or keywords. They fail because they are the wrong kind of page for the search.
By David Cragg, Tucson SEO consultant. In search since 1990.
The short version
- Search intent is the reason behind a search, not the words in it.
- There are four working types: informational, navigational, commercial and transactional. Local businesses need a fifth, local.
- The results page tells you the intent. Search the keyword and look at what Google already ranks.
- One page, one intent. Pages that teach and sell at the same time lose both audiences.
- Bounce rate is not a ranking factor. Google has said so for over a decade. Fix pages because they miss the question, not because a number looks bad.
I have been doing this since 1990, which means I spent years watching people chase keyword density and word counts. Almost none of that matters now. What matters is whether your page is the kind of thing the searcher wanted. Get that wrong and nothing else you do will save the page. Get it right and ordinary work starts producing results.
This guide covers what search intent is, how to read it off a results page in about ten minutes, what to build for each type, and the mistakes I find over and over in site audits.
What is search intent?
Search intent is the reason behind a search. It is what the person typing actually wants to get done. You will also see it called user intent or keyword intent. They all mean the same thing.
Four people can search four different phrases and want the same thing. One person can search a single phrase and want three different things. That is why the words in a query are a poor guide on their own.
Google's own Search Quality Rater Guidelines tell human raters to work out the intent first, then judge how well a page serves it. The guidelines use their own labels, Know, Do, Website and Visit-in-person, but the idea is the one every SEO works with: figure out the goal, then judge the page against the goal.
The keyword tells you what someone typed. The results page tells you what Google thinks they meant. Only one of those is worth building a page around.
David Cragg Tucson SEO consultant, in search since 1990Why intent decides whether a page ranks
Google's job is to satisfy the person searching. Not to reward the page with the best keyword placement. Once you accept that, a lot of SEO advice stops making sense and the rest gets simpler.
If ten guides rank for a query, Google has already told you that people who search it want a guide. Publishing a sales page for that query is not a bold move. It is a page that cannot win, no matter how fast it loads or how many links point at it.
Google's own advice for site owners says the same thing in plainer language: make helpful, reliable content for people, and use the words people actually use to look for it. That is in the Google Search Essentials.
One thing you should stop worrying about
You will read that a bad intent match hurts you because it drives up bounce rate and pogo-sticking, and that Google punishes you for both. Be careful with that claim. Google has denied it for years. Gary Illyes said in 2015 that Google does not use Analytics or bounce rate in search ranking. John Mueller has called the idea a misconception. Google cannot see your Analytics bounce rate anyway. That data sits in your account, not in Google's index.
What is fair to say is narrower. Testimony in the United States antitrust case against Google, and Google's own descriptions of how Search works, both point to systems that pay attention to how people behave on the results page. That is not the same as your bounce rate, and you cannot manage it directly.
So the honest version is this: an intent mismatch mostly costs you the ranking itself, because Google never picks the wrong kind of page in the first place. That is bad enough. You do not need a myth to make the case.
The four types of search intent
Four types cover almost everything. If you run a local business, treat local as a fifth, because it behaves differently and it is usually where your money is.
Informational
They want to learn something. These searches start with how, what, why or guide. The person is not ready to hire anyone. They are working out what their problem even is.
Examples: what is search intent, why is my website not on Google, how does local SEO work.
Build: guides, explainers, FAQ pages, glossary entries. Soft links onward, no hard sell.
Navigational
They want a specific site. They already know where they are going and are using Google as a shortcut. You will not win someone else's brand search, and you should not try.
Examples: Google Search Console login, Tucson SEO David Cragg.
Build: a clear homepage, a real about page, a claimed Google Business Profile. Own your own name properly.
Commercial
They have decided to buy, not who from. They are comparing. This is the stage where an honest comparison earns more trust than a sales pitch, because they can tell the difference.
Examples: best SEO consultant in Tucson, SEO versus Google Ads for small business.
Build: comparisons, buyer's guides, case studies, straight answers about what things cost.
Transactional
They are ready now. Lowest volume, highest value. For a local service business these are the searches that pay the bills, and they are usually the ones the site is weakest on.
Examples: SEO services Tucson, emergency plumber Tucson open now, book a dental cleaning.
Build: one focused service page per service, phone number visible, no distractions.
How much of search is informational?
You have seen the claim that 80 percent of searches are informational. It gets repeated without a source constantly, so here is the source, and here is why I would not lean on it too hard.
The number comes from a 2008 paper by Jansen, Booth and Spink, Determining the informational, navigational, and transactional intent of Web queries. They classified more than 1.5 million queries from a 2005 search log. Earlier work by Broder, reported in the same paper, came out very differently.
| Study | Informational | Navigational | Transactional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jansen, Booth and Spink, 2008 (2005 log data) | Over 80% | About 10% | About 10% |
| Broder, 2002 (log analysis, as reported by Jansen) | 48% | 20% | 30% |
Two studies, wildly different answers, and the newest of them is built on data from 2005. That is before smartphones changed how people search, before voice, before AI answers. Anyone quoting 80 percent as a current statistic is quoting a twenty-year-old log file.
What both studies agree on is the part that matters: informational searching is the largest single category, by a distance. And almost every small business site I audit has nothing built for it. Five service pages, a contact form, and no answer to a single question a customer might ask first.
How I find the intent behind a keyword
This takes about ten minutes per keyword and it is the most valuable ten minutes in the whole process. I do it before I write a word.
- Search the keyword and read the top ten results. Not the rankings, the format. Are they guides, service pages, comparison lists, a map pack, a video? Whatever dominates is what Google has decided this query wants. That is not an opinion you get to argue with.
- Check what else is on the page. An AI answer, a People Also Ask box, a featured snippet, shopping results, a map pack. Each one tells you something. A map pack means local intent and your Google Business Profile matters more than the page does.
- Read the word clues. How, what, why and guide mean informational. Best, top, review and versus mean commercial. Buy, price, hire, book and near me mean transactional. Brand names mean navigational. These give you a fast first guess, nothing more.
- Look at the angle, not just the type. If the top results are all guides, are they beginner guides, guides for small business, or guides with a year in the title? Match the angle too. Getting the type right and the angle wrong still loses.
- Then check your tool, last. Ahrefs, Semrush and SE Ranking all label intent automatically. The labels are useful for sorting a long list quickly. They are a starting point, not a verdict. The results page settles it.
The one rule that saves the most work
One page, one intent. If you find yourself writing a page that explains a topic and also asks for the sale, stop and split it in two. Write the guide, write the service page, and link the guide to the service page. The link does the job the combined page was trying to do, and neither half has to compromise.
What to build for each intent
Knowing the intent is only useful if it changes the page. Here is what actually changes.
| Intent | The page has to be | The call to action should be |
|---|---|---|
| Informational | A guide or explainer. Answer in the first two sentences, then expand. Real question headings. | Soft. A link onward to the next step, not a quote request. |
| Navigational | Your homepage, about page or Google Business Profile. Instantly recognisable as the right place. | Whatever they came for. Get out of the way. |
| Commercial | A comparison, review or case study. Honest about trade-offs, including yours. | Medium. Here is how to choose, and here is what I do. |
| Transactional | A focused service page. What it is, what it costs, who does the work, how to start. | Direct. Phone number, tappable, above the fold. |
| Local | A city or service-area page, plus a complete Google Business Profile with real photos and reviews. | Call, directions, hours. Assume they are on a phone. |
Then link them together in the order a real customer moves: guide, comparison, service page, contact. That internal path is not a trick for Google. It is the actual sequence a buyer goes through, and building it means people can follow it without going back to search.
Intent mistakes I keep finding in audits
These are the ones I see most often, in roughly the order of how much damage they do.
- A blog post aimed at a transactional keyword. Someone wrote a 2,000 word article targeting SEO services Tucson. Google shows service pages for that query. The article was never going to rank, and the effort would have doubled the service page instead.
- A service page aimed at a best-of keyword. The mirror image. Best SEO consultant in Tucson returns lists and comparisons. Your sales page is not a list. It will not win that query.
- One page trying to do everything. Usually a service page with 1,500 words of education bolted on top because someone said long content ranks. It reads as neither, and it buries the phone number.
- No informational content at all. The most common problem on small business sites. Nothing for the largest category of search, so nothing to build topical depth with and nothing to link from.
- Keyword chosen from a tool, never checked against a results page. Good volume, low difficulty, plausible relevance, completely wrong format. The tool cannot see this. Only the results page can.
- Nobody looked again after publishing. Intent moves. A query that returned articles two years ago may return product pages now. If a page slid and nothing technical broke, check the results page before you blame anything else.
Does intent still matter in AI search?
More than before, and the reason is simple. An assistant is not choosing a link for someone to click. It is choosing a sentence to repeat. Vague pages do not get repeated.
Google's guidance on AI features and your website says there are no extra technical requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode. To be eligible, a page needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet. That is it. Their follow-up guidance on succeeding in AI search makes the same point: unique, helpful, people-first content, and a page that is not a chore to read.
What I do differently for it is small and worth doing anyway. Answer the question in the first two sentences under each heading, then expand. Use headings that are real questions. Put a short FAQ at the bottom with matching schema. Say who wrote the page and what they actually know. None of that is a trick. It just makes a page easy to quote, and being easy to quote is the whole game now.
A search intent checklist you can run today
- Every target keyword has an intent label, assigned by looking at the results page.
- No page targets two different intents.
- There is real informational content, not just service pages.
- There is at least one honest comparison page for buyers still deciding.
- Every core service has its own page, with a tappable phone number.
- Page format matches what Google already ranks for the keyword.
- Calls to action match the stage. No quote form on a definition page.
- Internal links run guide to comparison to service page to contact.
- Key pages have a short FAQ with matching FAQPage schema.
- Headings are phrased as questions people actually ask.
- A named author with real credentials is on the page.
- Results pages for main keywords get re-checked monthly.
Where this fits with the rest of the work
Content creation
Intent decides what gets written. This is the page that explains how the writing actually gets done, including where I use AI and where I do not.
Tucson SEO services
The monthly work. Keyword and intent mapping, on-page, local, links and reporting, done by one person.
SEO audit
Where intent problems get found. Most of the mistakes listed above turn up in the first hour of an audit.
Technical SEO
Crawling, speed and schema. Intent decides if a page can rank. Technical decides whether Google can use it.
Website design
If the site cannot hold a separate page per intent without a fight, the site is the problem.
More content marketing
Related reading: building a content marketing strategy and the advanced SEO glossary.
About the author
David Cragg has worked in search since 1990. He built and sold two internet marketing companies, Lotus411.com, acquired by TechTarget, and MSD2D.com, acquired by Penton Media. He holds an economics degree from UCLA and an MBA from the University of Washington. He started Temecula SEO in 2007 and moved the practice to Tucson in 2022.
He works with a small number of clients at a time and does the work himself: the audits, the schema, the code and the writing. There is no account manager and no junior team. More about David Cragg or how the engagement works.
How the content on this site is produced, including where AI assists and where it is not allowed to, is set out on the content creation page.
Not sure your pages match what people are searching for?
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Or send a message. One consultant, $1,000 a month, no contract.
Questions about search intent
What is search intent?
Search intent is the reason behind a search. It is what the person typing the query is actually trying to do: learn something, reach a specific website, compare their options, or buy. You will also see it called user intent or keyword intent. They mean the same thing.
Google's own rater guidelines sort queries into Know, Do, Website and Visit-in-person. Matching intent means giving the searcher the thing they came for, in the format they expect to find it in. A page can use the right keyword and still fail, because it is the wrong kind of page.
What are the four types of search intent?
Informational: the person wants to learn something. Example: what is search intent. Navigational: the person wants a specific site or page. Example: Google Search Console login. Commercial: the person has decided to buy but has not decided from whom. Example: best SEO consultant in Tucson. Transactional: the person is ready to act now. Example: SEO services Tucson.
Some people add a fifth, local or visit-in-person intent, because queries like plumber near me behave differently from the other four. Google's raters treat that as its own category, and for a local business it is usually the most valuable one.
How do I find the search intent of a keyword?
Search the keyword in Google and read the first ten results. Whatever format dominates is the format Google has already decided answers that query. If the results are guides, you need a guide. If they are service pages, you need a service page. If they are map results, you need a local page and a strong Google Business Profile.
Word clues help you make a first guess. How, what, why and guide point to informational. Best, top, review and versus point to commercial. Buy, price, hire, book and near me point to transactional. Brand names point to navigational. The clues are a shortcut, not proof. The results page is the proof.
Is bounce rate a Google ranking factor?
No. Google staff have denied it repeatedly. Gary Illyes said in 2015 that Google does not use Analytics or bounce rate in search ranking, and John Mueller has called the idea a misconception. Google cannot see the bounce rate in your Analytics account in the first place, because that data lives in your account and not in Google's index.
What is fair to say is narrower. Testimony in the United States antitrust case against Google, and Google's own documentation about how Search works, both point to systems that pay attention to how people interact with the results page itself. That is not your bounce rate. Do not rewrite a page because a number in Analytics looks high. Rewrite it because it does not answer the question people asked.
What percentage of searches are informational?
The figure you see everywhere is about 80 percent. It comes from a 2008 study by Jansen, Booth and Spink. They classified more than 1.5 million queries from a 2005 search log. More than 80 percent were informational, with roughly 10 percent each navigational and transactional.
Treat that number as a shape, not a statistic. It is from a 2005 data set collected before smartphones, voice search and AI answers. Earlier work by Broder, reported in the same paper, put informational queries nearer 48 percent. The safe conclusion is the one all of the studies agree on: most searches are people trying to learn something, and most small business websites have almost no content for them.
What is the difference between commercial and transactional intent?
Commercial intent means the person has decided to buy but has not decided from whom. They are comparing. Best SEO consultant in Tucson is commercial. Transactional intent means the decision is made and they want to act. SEO services Tucson is transactional.
The difference matters because it changes what kind of page can win. Google usually shows comparison articles and lists for commercial queries, and service pages for transactional ones. Pointing a sales page at a best-of query is one of the most common reasons a good page never ranks.
Can one page target two different search intents?
Usually not, and trying is a common way to waste a page. A page written to teach and sell at the same time reads as too commercial for the people who wanted to learn, and too vague for the people who were ready to buy. It loses both.
The working rule I use is one page, one intent. Build the informational page, build the service page, and link the first to the second. The link does the work the combined page was trying to do, without the compromise.
How do I know when the intent behind a keyword has changed?
Watch the results page, not just the ranking. Intent shifts show up as a change in the kind of result Google shows. A query that used to return blog posts starts returning product pages, or a map pack appears, or an AI answer takes the top of the page. When that happens, the page you have may no longer be the right kind of page.
A ranking drop with no technical cause and no lost links is often an intent shift rather than a penalty. I re-check the results page for the main keyword on every page I manage as part of the monthly work.
Does search intent still matter in AI Overviews and ChatGPT?
Yes, and arguably more. Google's own documentation says there are no extra technical requirements for appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The same fundamentals apply. Be indexable, be eligible for a snippet, and publish helpful, reliable content written for people.
What changes is the format that gets used. An assistant pulling an answer needs a short, clear, self-contained statement it can lift. So answer the question in the first two sentences under the heading, then expand. Use real question headings. Say who wrote the page and what they know. Vague pages do not get quoted.
Sources
- Google, Search Quality Rater Guidelines (PDF), for the Know, Do, Website and Visit-in-person intent categories.
- Jansen, B. J., Booth, D. L. and Spink, A. (2008), Determining the informational, navigational, and transactional intent of Web queries, Information Processing and Management 44(3), 1251 to 1266, for the 80 percent figure and the Broder comparison.
- Google Search Essentials, for Google's own best-practice guidance.
- Google, AI features and your website and Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google's AI experiences on Search, for AI Overviews eligibility.
- Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content, for the quality-over-production-method position.
Last reviewed 14 August 2026 by David Cragg. Search changes; if something here has aged, tell me and I will fix it.
