User intent

Last updated

User intent, otherwise known as query intent or search intent, is the identification and categorization of what a user online intended or wanted to find when they typed their search terms into an online web search engine for the purpose of search engine optimisation or conversion rate optimisation. [1] Examples of user intent are fact-checking, comparison shopping or navigating to other websites.

Contents

Optimizing For User Intent

To increase ranking on search engines, marketers need to create content that best satisfies queries entered by users on their smartphones or desktops. Creating content with user intent in mind helps increase the value of the information being showcased. [2] Keyword research can help determine user intent. The search terms a user enters into a web search engine to find content, services, or products are the words that should be used on the webpage to optimize for user intent. [3]

Google can show SERP features such as featured snippets, knowledge cards or knowledge panels for queries where the search intent is clear. SEO practitioners take this into account because Google can often satisfy the user intent without having the user leave Google SERP. The better Google gets in figuring out user intent, the less users are going to click on search results. As of 2019, less than half of Google searches result in clicks.[ citation needed ]

Types

Though there are various ways of classifying the categories of user intent, overall, they tend to follow the same clusters. Until recently,[ when? ] there were three broad categories: informational, transactional, and navigational. [4] However, after the rise [5] of mobile search, other categories have appeared or have segmented into more specific categorisation. [6] [7] For example, as mobile users may want to find directions or information about a specific physical location, some marketers have proposed categories such as "local intent," as in searches like "XY near me." Additionally, there is commercial search intent, which is when someone searches for a product or service to know more about it or compare other alternatives before finalizing their purchase.[ citation needed ]

See the major types with examples below:

Informational Intent: Donald Trump, Who is Maradona?, How to lose weight?

Navigational Intent: Facebook login, Wikipedia contribution page

Transactional Intent: Latest iPhone, Amazon coupons, cheap dell laptop, fence installers

Commercial Intent: top headphones, best marketing agency, x protein powder review,

Local Search Intent: restaurants near me, nearest gas station,

Many search queries also have mixed search intent. For example, when someone searches "Best iPhone repair shop near me" is transactional and local search intent. Mixed search intent can easily happen with homonyms and such SERPs tend to be volatile because user signals differ.[ citation needed ]

User intent is often misinterpreted, and thinking that there are just a few user intent types is not giving the complete picture of the user behavior.

It is also a term to describe what type of activity, business or services users are searching for (not only the user behavior after the search).

Example: when you write 'Spanish games' in the search engine (your browser settings in English) you have results for learning Spanish methods, not a real games with Spanish origin. In this example, the user intent is to learn Spanish language, not to play typical games. This intent is reflected by Google and the other search engines, and they strive to display their SERP results based on the user interest.

See also

Related Research Articles

Meta elements are tags used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page. They are part of a web page's head section. Multiple Meta elements with different attributes can be used on the same page. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.

Spamdexing is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as link building and repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Unpaid traffic may originate from different kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search, news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

A backlink is a link from some other website to that web resource. A web resource may be a website, web page, or web directory.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anchor text</span> Visible, clickable text in a hyperlink

The anchor text, link label or link text is the visible, clickable text in an HTML hyperlink. The term "anchor" was used in older versions of the HTML specification for what is currently referred to as the a element, or <a>. The HTML specification does not have a specific term for anchor text, but refers to it as "text that the a element wraps around". In XML terms, the anchor text is the content of the element, provided that the content is text.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings and increase the Call to action (CTA) on the website.

Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings. Typical local search queries include not only information about "what" the site visitor is searching for but also "where" information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude. Examples of local searches include "Hong Kong hotels", "Manhattan restaurants", and "Dublin car rental". Local searches exhibit explicit or implicit local intent. A search that includes a location modifier, such as "Bellevue, WA" or "14th arrondissement", is an explicit local search. A search that references a product or service that is typically consumed locally, such as "restaurant" or "nail salon", is an implicit local search.

In web search engines, organic search results are the query results which are calculated strictly algorithmically, and not affected by advertiser payments. They are distinguished from various kinds of sponsored results, whether they are explicit pay per click advertisements, shopping results, or other results where the search engine is paid either for showing the result, or for clicks on the result.

A search engine results page (SERP) is a webpage that is displayed by a search engine in response to a query by a user. The main component of a SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.

A Website content writer or web content writer is a person who specializes in providing relevant content for websites; it is a sub-specialty of copywriting. Every website has a specific target audience and requires the most relevant content to attract business. Content should contain keywords aimed towards improving a website's SEO. A website content writer who also has knowledge of the SEO process is referred to as an SEO Content Writer.

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

Keyword research is a practice search engine optimization (SEO) professionals use to find and analyze search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for products, services, or general information. Keywords are related to search queries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reverse image search</span> Content-based image retrieval

Reverse image search is a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) query technique that involves providing the CBIR system with a sample image that it will then base its search upon; in terms of information retrieval, the sample image is very useful. In particular, reverse image search is characterized by a lack of search terms. This effectively removes the need for a user to guess at keywords or terms that may or may not return a correct result. Reverse image search also allows users to discover content that is related to a specific sample image or the popularity of an image, and to discover manipulated versions and derivative works.

Search analytics is the use of search data to investigate particular interactions among Web searchers, the search engine, or the content during searching episodes. The resulting analysis and aggregation of search engine statistics can be used in search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO). In other words, search analytics helps website owners understand and improve their performance on search engines based on the outcome. For example, identifying highly valuable site visitors or understanding user intent. Search analytics includes search volume trends and analysis, reverse searching, keyword monitoring, search result and advertisement history, advertisement spending statistics, website comparisons, affiliate marketing statistics, multivariate ad testing, et al.

Intent marketing is about marketing a product or a service based on consumers' intent to adopt, purchase or consume that particular service which the subscriber may have explicitly or implicitly conveyed.

Hummingbird is the codename given to a significant algorithm change in Google Search in 2013. Its name was derived from the speed and accuracy of the hummingbird. The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month. "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords. It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just a website's homepage.

Contextual search is a form of optimizing web-based search results based on context provided by the user and the computer being used to enter the query. Contextual search services differ from current search engines based on traditional information retrieval that return lists of documents based on their relevance to the query. Rather, contextual search attempts to increase the precision of results based on how valuable they are to individual users.

RankBrain is a machine learning-based search engine algorithm, the use of which was confirmed by Google on 26 October 2015. It helps Google to process search results and provide more relevant search results for users. In a 2015 interview, Google commented that RankBrain was the third most important factor in the ranking algorithm, along with links and content. As of 2015, "RankBrain was used for less than 15% of queries." The results show that RankBrain produces results that are well within 10% of the Google search engine engineer team.

Local search engine optimization is similar to (national) SEO in that it is also a process affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. In general, the higher ranked on the search results page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users; these visitors can then be converted into customers. Local SEO, however, differs in that it is focused on optimizing a business's online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when users enter local searches for its products or services. Ranking for local search involves a similar process to general SEO but includes some specific elements to rank a business for local search.

References

  1. ↑ Jansen, Jim (July 2011). Understanding Sponsored Search: Core Elements of Keyword Advertising. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. p. 44. ISBN   9781107011977.
  2. ↑ "How to Create a User-Intent SEO Strategy". 28 September 2018.
  3. ↑ L., Ledford, Jerri (2015). Search engine optimization bible, 2nd ed. Wiley. ISBN   978-1-118-08081-8. OCLC   933401063.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ↑ Broder, Andrei (Fall 2002). "A Taxonomy of Web Search" (PDF). SIGIR Forum. 36 (2): 5–6. doi:10.1145/792550.792552. S2CID   207602540 . Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  5. ↑ "The Rise of Mobile Search: From 2012 to 2015". Texo Design. Archived from the original on 6 July 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  6. ↑ KhudaBukhsh, Ashiqur; Bennett, Paul; White, Ryen (2015). "Building Effective Query Classifiers: A Case Study in Self-harm Intent Detection" (PDF). CIKM '15 Proceedings of the 24th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management: 1735–1738. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  7. ↑ Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (PDF). 28 March 2016. pp. 61–74. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.