Table of contents:
- Introduction
There are approximately 16 billion Google searches conducted daily. It’s twice the world’s population. Searches really determine our lives now. We use search engines to find detailed information on a topic, keep up with recent news, or most importantly, to order and buy products.
That’s why companies recently started focusing on securing better rankings on search results pages, advertising on designated keywords, and understanding online human behavior. As soon as we understand how our potential buyers make search intentions, we are one step ahead of our competitors. This article will help you to understand how users interact with search pages, and how to draw conclusions based on little insights.
- What is a search intent?
Search intent refers to the reason behind a user’s search query. There are four types of search intents:
- Informational intent
In this case, the user wants to understand a topic because of a project, a work task, or just out of curiosity.
- Example: “When did Napoleon die?” – There’s no buying intent in this case, and it’s usually not worth the money to advertise on these intents.
- Navigation intent
Navigation intent is when the users know where they want to go, but use the search page to get there. In this case, instead of typing a web URL, the user writes “Facebook login” to the search bar and opens up the right website.
As this is a specific intent, there’s no need to regularly advertise on these types of searches. If the user wants to reach your site, they will do so; otherwise, you can’t convince him.
- Commercial investigation
Commercial investigation is when the user wants to have a deep dive into something, probably to have a clearer and better insight.
Example: when the user types “best laptops for gamers in 2025” into the search page, they are not yet committed to any particular laptop but want to explore the options. In this case, he may buy something at the end, as these searches aim for commercial purposes. Therefore, advertising on these search enquiries can be a reasonable choice. However, here the user is more steps away from buying a product, so it can be more expensive than in the case of the last intent.
- Transactional intent
This type of intent is a confession: “I’m ready to take action and buy a product”. Here, the potential customer is convinced and doesn’t want to waste more time.
Example: when the user types “iPhone 15 128GB”, it is almost certain that the user is interested in that product, and he aims for finding the best seller. If your webshop offers iPhone 15 products, it is a search that has real value for you. You don’t need to spend resources on convincing him to choose this product. In a case like this, you only need to persuade him to choose your webshop. But this is the cheapest option you can get.
- How does intent become a keyword?
What we all need to notice is that different intentions have their own characteristics. For example, the “what is” expression usually refers to an informational intent. However, the words “buy, order, discount, or sign up” usually refer to a transactional intent.
The more users type down the same transactional intentions, the more valuable it is for businesses. Marketers know that from the beginning, and the whole PPC marketing industry exists for this specific purpose: to analyze searches and use the best-performing keywords.
They have the tools for that: Google Ads, Google’s advertising tool, analyzes billions of daily searches, and gives insights to the marketers. The tool calculates the estimated prices of the chosen keywords and calculates the potential number of users who will use the designated keyword in a specific time range.
This is how a simple search – that we type into Google daily – transforms into valuable equipment in a matter of time.
- How to master search intent optimization?
In this part of the article, we give you some tips on how to understand your potential buyers better, which offers really lucrative benefits to your business.
- How to eliminate irrelevant traffic
If you run a webshop, it is possible that you can serve demands across the whole world. However, if you offer a service that is restricted to a certain location, you don’t want to come up as a relevant option to the whole world. First, it is expensive; second, you just waste your valuable resources. In this case, you need to somehow set location demands and filter irrelevant user searches. Luckily, both are achievable with Google Ads!
With this tool, you can select destinations and places where your ads must or mustn’t appear. So, if a user searches for a cheap Swedish massage from Kenya, and your salon is in the UK, your ad will never appear to this user.
Also, with Google Ads, you can set negative keywords. These are the keywords that you never want to appear. If you offer legal services, you don’t want to appear on legal documents. It’s because those users who have this search intent most probably want information about the document, maybe they want to download and print it. But they rarely want legal help.
You need to find those expressions that don’t convert to purchases one by one. It is quite general that an informational intent falsely claimed transactional, which just burns money and nothing else.
- Filter Google’s ideas
Google Ads offers various AI-powered features that claim to deliver higher conversions than traditional setups. However, they are still not good enough, and many marketers do not actually use them.
These AI functions are very good at analyzing intents and giving you recommendations about relevant keywords.
For example, if you have a webshop selling scooters, you want to appear on searches like: cheap scooters, best scooters, or scooter to buy. However, Google may feel like Scooter tour is also a relevant keyword for you. Actually, it is not, but Google rarely connects two different things together. Scooter is a very popular German band that still performs concerts and world tours. The expression “Scooter tour” rather refers to this band than an actual scooter ride. It’s not worth it to appear on this search, as your offer is most likely irrelevant to these users.
This is why you always need to filter Google’s ideas and bravely make decisions on your own.
- Measure and optimize
Search intent optimization is not a one-time activity. It requires continuous measurements and quick responses to changed behaviors and trends. User intentions are changing rapidly, and we need to decode these changes in order to prepare with new, innovative ideas and techniques to make them choose our site instead of the competitors.
In case of a domain registrar website, you need to always check the latest domain trends, and if something new occurs, include it in your search intent strategy. You can’t always just make pay-per-click strategies to the “.com” extension, because once search volume for “.com” declines, you’ll run out of opportunities.
- Conclusion
In this article, we explored the meaning of search intents, and how intents are converted into keywords. We also gave you free tips for managing search intents, optimizing them, and making strategic decisions based on your data!
