Search intent
Search intent is what a user is actually trying to accomplish with a query, as distinct from the words they typed. The usual classification is informational, navigational and transactional, and it determines both the ranking and the shape of the results page.
Two queries can share words and have nothing else in common. “Python” from someone learning to code and “python” from someone reading about snakes are the same string and different intents, and the results page reflects whichever the engine judges dominant.
The three-way classification is old but still useful:
- Informational — the user wants to know something. Answers, guides, definitions. “How does indexing work”.
- Navigational — the user wants a specific destination. “Search Console login”. One result dominates and everything below it is noise.
- Transactional — the user wants to do or buy something. Product pages, tools, sign-up flows.
A fourth category, commercial investigation, sits between the last two: the user is comparing before buying.
The practical use is diagnostic. If your page is not ranking for a query, look at what does rank. If every result is a product page and yours is a blog post, the problem is not your content quality — it is that you have written the wrong type of page for the intent the engine has assigned.