Informational query

[seoanalytics]

Hello,

In an informational query can the answer people are looking for have multiple intent or will it always have 1 intent ?

For example New York, the intent is probably where ?

On a longer query such as "Provence bike tour" what is the intent ? Where, what, Why, How to, when ?

Thank you,

[seoanalytics]

Thank you for your detailed answer.

[effectdigital]

On Google, query-spaces can become ambiguous. For some keywords, Google know that there is a very strong affinity in terms of the user's search-intent

For example, if the query is: "properties to rent in Camden, London" - then it's almost certain that the searcher is looking for a new place to live and wants to see rental property listings

If on the other hand, the query is something like "science", that's extremely broad. Do the users want science news? Maybe to pick up a sciences degree? Do they want to know the basic principles of science (e.g: the scientific method?)

The answer to your question is variable. It's not that Google 'always' assumes one meaning, or 'always' assumes multiple meanings. It depends upon the specific search-query, and the resources available within the appended query-space

You'll find that some query-spaces are very, very noisy and not really very helpful - because there's just too many search audiences 'competing' (through their clicks and queries) for 'control' of the query-space. Some query-spaces are like a battleground, others are much more straight-forwards and easy to interpret

As a general rule of thumb, if a search query returns results predominantly from one type of site - all about the exact same thing, that query-space is 'clean'. If you search for something and the results are messy and all over the place, then the query-space is 'noisy'

It's easier to optimise for clean query-spaces, but because they are clean your competition will be harder to overcome. In a noisy query-space, it's harder to write that one piece of content that addresses everyone perfectly - but competition is usually not as stiff (because most people can't be bothered optimising for noisy query-spaces, you can't do it with crappy textbroker articles - it takes real thought!)

So there you go. You should now have a lens to analyse Google's results with, and decide upon your SEO / content implementation