What is Search Intent?
The job behind a query: learn (informational), compare (commercial), buy (transactional), or navigate (navigational). Pages that mismatch intent rarely convert no matter how well they rank.
Example
"Best AI website builder" is commercial investigation: the winner is a criteria table with trials and limits, not a 3,000-word history of website builders.
What people get wrong
Targeting transactional queries with purely informational pages. Ranking without converting is an intent mismatch, not a CRO problem.
Related terms
Informational Intent
Queries seeking to learn: guides, definitions, how-tos. Serve with complete explanations, examples, and next-step links rather than sales copy.
Transactional Intent
Queries ready to act: buy, sign up, download. Serve with product fit, proof, pricing clarity, and one primary call to action.
Keyword Mapping
Assigning each keyword cluster to exactly one canonical page. The map is the contract that stops two pages from chasing the same query.
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.
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.
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.