What is Commercial Investigation?
Pre-purchase comparison queries ("X vs Y", "best X for Z"). Win with criteria tables, sourced claims, and honest fit statements instead of adjectives.
Related terms
Transactional Intent
Queries ready to act: buy, sign up, download. Serve with product fit, proof, pricing clarity, and one primary call to action.
Alternatives Page
A comparison page for buyers evaluating options ("X alternatives"). Win with criteria tables, sourced limits, honest fit statements, and one CTA — adjectives and cherry-picked rows lose trust.
Fact Density
The concentration of checkable claims per section: numbers, names, dates, criteria, steps. Fact-dense sections survive chunk retrieval and get cited; filler does not.
Keyword Research
Finding the queries your audience actually types and mapping them to pages worth building. Teams that always do it report strong content results far more often than teams that skip it.
Informational Intent
Queries seeking to learn: guides, definitions, how-tos. Serve with complete explanations, examples, and next-step links rather than sales copy.
Navigational Intent
Queries looking for a specific site or page ("byob pricing"). The brand’s own page should own these outright; anything else is a findability bug.