Search intent is the small part of user intent that reaches a search box.

Search intent is the purpose a search engine reads from a query. It is query-based: the reading starts from the words typed and from what earlier searchers clicked for them. It is the small part of user intent that reaches a search box, the part a person could put into a few words.

Informational search intent is the class for queries that seek knowledge, an explanation or an answer. It is the largest class in the best-known counts. It is also the class that hides the most, because a question can be asked for very different reasons.

Also discussed at https://www.semrush.com/blog/search-intent/

Navigational search intent is the class for queries that aim at one particular website or place online. The person already knows where they want to go. The query is a shortcut, and the result is either the destination or a detour.

Commercial search intent is the class for queries that compare and evaluate products or services before a purchase. SEO guides added it to the three classes of the original web search taxonomy. It marks the stage where a person weighs options before deciding.

Also discussed at https://www.semrush.com/blog/search-intent/

Transactional search intent is the class for queries that aim to complete an action, such as buying, booking or downloading. It is the class marketing values most. A query can look transactional and still come from someone who is not ready to act.

If the words of a query carried one readable intent, a second reading by hand would confirm the class. It changed the class for one query in four.

Google's search quality rater guidelines describe user intent in their own categories, among them Know, Do, Website and Visit-in-person. Human raters use them to judge whether results meet the need behind a query. The ratings help Google evaluate its systems, and Google states that they do not directly rank individual pages.

Also discussed at https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/overview-our-rater-guidelines-search/

The three Cs are content type, content format and content angle, a checklist from SEO practice for matching a page to what already ranks. It reads the intent from the result page itself. What already ranks becomes the template for what should rank next.

Also discussed at https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-intent/

Described in a Google patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8756218B1/en

SERP features are the elements of a result page beyond the ten links: answer boxes, product listings, maps, videos and questions. Search engines choose them from the intent they infer, and SEO practice reads the intent back from them. The reading confirms itself, which is how a confirmation bias builds into the result page.

Also discussed at https://www.semrush.com/kb/1226-how-is-keyword-intent-calculated

Described in a Google patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9607087B1/en

Semantics is the study of meaning, and search systems use it to interpret a query beyond its exact words. It connects a query to entities, synonyms and related concepts. The words stay the ground on which that meaning is built.

Also discussed at https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/

Described in a Google patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7636714B1/en

Speech acts are utterances understood as actions: asking, requesting, promising, thanking. Research on conversational search uses the idea to read what a spoken or typed turn is meant to do.

An illocutionary act is the communicative force of an utterance: whether it asks, orders, promises or asserts. The same words can carry different forces. A query has a force, and the four intent classes only capture part of it.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/

The person. Search intent is treated as a four-part taxonomy of queries, and pragmatics is missing from it: indirect speech acts, the conditions under which a request counts as fulfilled, presuppositions, and the difference between what a query says and what its author means. That missing part is where user intent lives, the thoughts, questions and wishes a person carries at the kitchen table or in the car long before a word is typed.

An indirect speech act performs one act by means of another, as when a question works as a request. John Searle described the mechanism in 1975. A query phrased as a question or a statement often asks for something its words do not name, and a keyword reading passes over it.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/

Felicity conditions are the conditions under which a speech act succeeds, for instance that a request is possible to fulfil and that the speaker actually wants it fulfilled. They decide whether an answer counts as an answer. A page can match every word of a query and still fail all of them.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/speech-acts/

Indirect search intent is the purpose behind a query that its words do not state. The person with a headache types headache tablet and wants the headache gone. The four classes file the query under the tablet.

Contextual enrichment is the pragmatic process by which a listener fills in what the literal words leave open, using the situation. Every short query needs it to mean anything. A page written for the literal words skips the step the searcher already took.

An explicature is the full proposition a listener develops from an incomplete utterance, a concept from relevance theory. Two or three words in a search box stand for a complete thought. The missing parts of that thought decide which answer fits.

Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, explains understanding as a balance between the effect a piece of information has and the effort it takes to process. It defines relevance from the side of the mind. SEO uses the word relevance constantly and rarely defines it.

Speaker meaning is what a person intends to communicate by an utterance, as distinct from what the words mean in general. Paul Grice made the distinction central to the study of meaning. In search, it is the part of user intent that a dictionary cannot supply.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/

Utterance meaning is the meaning of words as used in one particular situation, between their general sentence meaning and the speaker's intention. The same query means different things on a Monday morning and at midnight. Treating every query as if it had one meaning erases the situation.

Also discussed at https://www.semrush.com/blog/search-intent/

An expressive speech act states a feeling or an attitude: thanking, complaining, apologising, being worried. Many queries carry one, as in why does my back hurt so much. A taxonomy of information and transactions has no class for the worry.

A commissive speech act commits the speaker to a future action: promising, pledging, registering. Some queries announce such a commitment, such as a sign-up or an enrolment. Filing them as ordinary purchases misses what the person is about to bind themselves to.

A declarative speech act changes a state of affairs by being performed, such as resigning, naming or cancelling. Online, many actions work this way: cancelling a contract or submitting an application. A query for such an act is neither navigation nor a purchase.

The essential condition is what makes an utterance count as the act it is, for a question the attempt to obtain the information asked for. It names the obligation a valid response has to meet. A page that mentions every target term and never meets that obligation has answered nothing.

Propositional content is what an utterance is about, the state of affairs it describes, independent of its force. A query has one: its words stand in relations to each other. A reading that counts single keywords loses those relations.

Also discussed at https://www.semrush.com/blog/search-intent/

Presupposition accommodation is the process by which a listener silently accepts a background assumption that an utterance takes for granted. David Lewis described it in 1979. headache tablet takes pills for granted, and a page that accommodates the assumption without noticing it leaves out the person who would prefer something else.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presupposition/

A pragmatic presupposition is background knowledge a speaker assumes to be shared with the listener, as Robert Stalnaker described it. Searchers assume far more shared context than a search box holds. The answer that fits is the one that knows what was assumed.

Also discussed at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presupposition/

Information structure is the way an utterance divides what is given from what is new and in focus. In a query of several words, one part is the known frame and another is what the person actually wants to find. Treating the words as an unordered set loses which is which.

Topic-comment structure separates what an utterance is about from what it says or asks about that topic. In the query headache tablet side effects, the tablet is the topic and the side effects are the question. Content aimed at the topic alone answers the wrong half.

An implicit information need is a need the person has without stating it, and sometimes without being aware of it. Robert Taylor described in 1968 how a need moves from an unexpressed state to the compromised form of a question put to a system. The query is the last and smallest of those stages.

A search goal is the larger aim that a whole search session serves, often across several queries. Daniel Rose and Danny Levinson studied such goals in web search in 2004. A page built for a single query serves one step of a path the person walks further.

A query reformulation pattern is the typical way people change a query when the first results do not help: adding words, removing words, replacing a term. Each change shows what the previous query did not carry. Intent read from one query at a time never sees the sequence.

Also discussed at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-simple/

Task-based search treats searching as part of completing a task, such as planning a move or choosing a treatment. The task decides which information is needed and in what order. Short, isolated queries are the visible fragments of that task.

An epistemic need is the need to know something well enough to believe it and act on it. A person with an informational query often wants reasons they can rely on, beyond a fact. A short answer meets the query and leaves that need open.

Cognitive search intent describes the state of understanding a person is in while searching: orienting, comparing, checking, deciding. The state changes during a single session. A page that answers only one state loses the person when they move to the next.

Queries that rely on implication, presupposition or an indirect request are filed under the wrong commercial class. Content is then built for the class, and the person who arrived with a different aim leaves. The cost appears as traffic that never converts, while the ranking report looks fine.

Answer the user intent and carry the search intent inside it. Whoever sells a course on acupressure treats headache tablets too, with their advantages and disadvantages, and explains why faster alternatives often exist. A page can also ask back what brought the visitor, which is the idea of Supervised Search.