search intent

Google’s own explanation of ranking puts intent first: “To return relevant results, we first need to establish what you’re looking for, the intent behind your query.” It then applies spelling correction, synonyms, and language models to map a few typed words onto useful content, so a single page rarely satisfies two different goals at once.

The taxonomy most SEOs use traces to Andrei Broder’s 2002 paper “A Taxonomy of Web Search,” which split queries into navigational (reach a specific site), informational (fill an information need), and transactional (perform an action such as shop, download, or find a map). Practitioners later added commercial investigation (compare options before buying), giving the familiar four types. Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines use their own labels: Know, Do, Website, and Visit-in-person.

Reading intent from the SERP

The fastest way to judge intent is to look at what already ranks. If best running shoes returns listicles and comparison pages, Google is treating the query as commercial, and a lone product page will struggle there. If how to clean running shoes returns step-by-step guides, the query is informational. Match your page type, format, and depth to what the current results reward, not to what you wish the query meant. When the intent behind a keyword is mixed, the top results usually show a blend, and that blend is your brief.