Search Intent

Search intent is what the person behind a query is trying to accomplish: to learn something, to reach a particular site, to compare options, or to buy. The words are the clue; the intent is what a page has to satisfy to be the right result.

The four kinds usually named

Informational (how, what, why), navigational (a brand or site name), commercial (best, versus, review) and transactional (buy, book, near me, price). Real queries mix them, and the same words carry different intent in different places and at different hours. A page matches intent when the thing the person came for is on the page in the form they came for it: a price where the query asked a price, a comparison where it asked which, directions where it asked where.

Intent in a question put to an assistant

In a conversation the intent is spelled out in the question, so the assistant does not have to infer it from three words. It retrieves pages and then looks for the passage that answers the question as asked. That turns intent into a property of the page: is there a span that answers this, on its own, with the business identified. This site’s own audit of 9,483 small-business sites found that about half had at least one heading phrased as a question with no answer isolated beneath it; the question was recognized and left open. That is the intent gap as it appears on a page, and the count is in what 9,483 small business websites serve to an AI crawler. The question panel this site measures with is built from the questions customers of one trade in one place actually ask, described on the methodology page.

A common question

How does intent change when someone asks an assistant instead of typing keywords?

A three-word query leaves the engine guessing at the purpose behind it. In a question put to an assistant the purpose is stated outright, so the assistant retrieves pages and then hunts for the span that answers the question as asked. Intent becomes a property of the page: either a passage answers that question on its own, with the business identified, or it does not. This site's audit of 9,483 small-business sites found about half carried a heading phrased as a question with no answer set out beneath it.

Sources

The audit observation is this site’s own, computed from its audit records; sample drawn per metro and trade. The four-way split is common usage, not a standard; no vendor taxonomy is cited. No percentages on this page.